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Remember When

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Remember When?

Musicality, Part Two

Irene Cara at Wilson School, greasepainting in JCHS, and tuning up in the garage

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 enrolled would play a tune. There were woodwinds, a stand-up bass, drums and violins. During the presentation, some pals and I were getting a little …

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Remember When?

Musicality, Part One

8-track flashbacks and a talent show hijack.

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 has to purchase 200 more 8-tracks between now and 2020 to be free of all obligations. Albanese Comes Alive I remember the exact day that first box of 8-…

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Remember When?

Cable TV Comes to the Caldwells

Dialing back time to tethered boxes and early-MTV mania.

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 console set. Rather than deprive folks of The Rockford Files and Donny and Marie (wow, what a great one-two punch those shows were), someone came up with …

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Remember When?

Back-to-School Memories: What Happened to Hull?

Former Wilson School teacher left quick, but lasting impression on fifth-graders.

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 and connect with pals; parents are like, "finally!" Truth be told, the little ones run out of steam by this point and the preparation and anticipation …

In this Article:

School Camping—What a Trip

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Remember When?

Bradlees Bandit Reforms From Days of 'Mischief'

Pip Squirt Pen thief gets popped by former W. Caldwell store's security camera.

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 personal definition is as follows:  Mischief (noun): The juxtaposition of deadpan humorous, playful behavior against the staid fabric of normalcy, …

In this Article:

Catholic Boy's Childhood Confessions

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Remember When?

Forever a W. Caldwell Resident at Heart

A tribute to 'the old man' Ronald Michael Albanese (1943-2010).

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 endless tour of doctors' offices and "goddamn brain scans," he was clear on what his fate would be, but nonetheless, he clearly resigned himself to be in …

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Remember When?

Catholic Boy's Childhood Confessions

Receiving Holy Communion and Confirmation and all the sins in between.

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 Doctrine. No wonder they use the abbreviation. In those days, C.C.D. (typing that is going to get old really fast) at St. Aloysius (that's always been…

In this Article:

Let it Snow: The Blizzard of 1978

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Remember When?

School Camping—What a Trip

Singing jingles to raise money for ventures to the woods and hiking with 'Hoppy.'

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 activities we have in our school, and thankfully, more than 90 percent of the parents allow the children to go. I started thinking about the camping trips I …

In this Article:

The Trails and Tribulations of the Sewage Plant

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Remember When?

Playgrounds of Peril: Schoolyards' Scary Side

The fun and dangers of monkey bars, seesaws, slides and rides that spin.

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 Caldwell-West Caldwell houses of learning at the time, Wilson, in particular, was a the most perfect example of a school playground of the time. Locally, …

In this Article:

Memorial Park, Richard Park, Grover Cleveland Park, and 1 more ›

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Remember When?

Children Chase the Latest Craze

From the popular Smurfs to the short-lived Ker-Bangers, fads part of growing up.

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. Before this latest craze, it was those rubber-band bracelets that are shaped like animals and western stuff  like 10-gallon hats and boots (I'm not …

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