Forty long years ago......

Mother-Dear.

Matron-of-honor Carol Button, Linda, me, best-man Ted Hinderer (and flower-girl Peggy).

........(December 30, 1967) Yr Fthfl Srvnt and his wife-to-be piled confusedly into my humble 1961 Corvair coupe and set out from Rochester to Thurston, N.Y., Linda’s home, to be married in Thurston Christian Church.
Thurston is uphill from Campbell, N.Y. (pronounced “Camp-BELL,” not the soup), and can be driven through in about a minute. It’s very rural. I remember spending the night there once, and ya could hear the cows when ya woke up. On Sunday morning ya heard the church bell. The town might have had 75 residents at that time — now it’s probably down to 50.
A number of wars were in action; primary of which was that we had originally intended to marry on December 31, but Linda’s mother put the kabosh to that, since Dec. 31 was a Sunday, and “didn’t make a lick of sense” since that would muck up the church schedule.
“Me domineering? Well I never! Don’t you dare ever bring that up again!”
The second war was that I thought Linda looked much better without her glasses, but Linda’s mother was appalled.
The wedding was without the glasses, but the reception, at Linda’s house, had the glasses.
What I remember most about this shindig was the Preacher-man (we think his name was “Dersham (‘Der-SHUM’)” asking if I wanted to “salute the bride.”
“Sure,” I answered, doing my best military salute, hand cupped to forehead.
We returned married; and I remember being scared to death.
What had I done? I was looking at a yawning and potentially precipitous future, and it was frightening.
I had just moved alone into into our first apartment, furnished digs at 644 Averill Ave. off Monroe Ave. in Rochester.
It was three flights up.
I also had a new job: hired as a management-trainee at Lincoln Rochester Bank.
So a number of new paradigms were in place, but I remember being terrified as Linda started hanging her clothes in our closet.
We had to get past a few things at first — first of which were the steamy entrails of my difficult childhood.
But like with Tim-oooo, I decided it was better to make things work — the rewards were worth it.
Had I not, it probably would have been over in months.
Second was to let Linda buy her own clothes.
This goes back to my having bought her an outfit at National Clothing Company, my first employer.
It inadvertently looked pretty good, so I wanted to be a part of her clothing purchases from then on.
Okay, but -A) finding attractive clothes for her was not easy; and -B) she was running out of clothes.
A bank isn’t a clothing-store, so I had to give up.
It wasn’t worth being impossible.
The next issue, and I’ve always felt bad about this, is my not wanting kids.
I didn’t want to carry on the hoary traditions of my father, like standoffishness and inability to communicate. I feel badly that everyone suffers from this; both Linda and my dogs. But I didn’t want kids to suffer that.

Linda’s father; her mother; Carol Button; Linda; me; Mother-Dear; Hinderer; the Preacher-Man. (Peggy is the flower-girl.)

The years rumbled by. Within months we traded our cars for the TR250, a feeble and erroneous attempt to bring back The Beast. But the TR250 was a poor automobile — a sportscar doesn’t make a proper pillar-to-post automobile.
I also bought the Frejus in a few years, while still on Averill (which was nearby the vaunted George Rennie Bike Shop, at that time the best bike shop in the area).
I also bought my first Pentax Spotmatic 35mm SLR camera.
After about three years at Lincoln Rochester (which became Lincoln-First Bank), I was released (supposedly not fired). The job I had trained for vaporized, and I was redirected toward front-desk interface, for which I was ill suited. (To be a front-desk lackey you had to have the morals of a slut — kiss the big fish and send the little fish packing.)
Toward the end of my short tenure at the bank, I started taking pictures at sportscar races.
And so began a long and fruitless attempt to become a freelance photographer.
We also moved to 20 Woodland Park in Rochester, an upstairs apartment of an aging dowager who lived downstairs.
Linda also began working at Lawyers Co-operative Publishing, a career that lasted almost 35 years (and moved on to different owners).
The dowager charged little rent, since we were also watching her.
She was quick to pass judgment though; questioning why we didn’t have furniture. (Our previous apartment had been furnished.)
Our mattress had to be horsed upstairs through a back upstairs porch. We did it with clothesline and Linda’s mother.
It was too big for the stairwell.

Mother-Dear.

My sister Betty (“Elz”), me, and Tim-oooo. (Reception at Linda’s house — Linda visible at right.)

My disemployment from the bank led to a seven-year interregnum from the world.
I set up a darkroom in our bathroom (it could be converted back), and learned black & white photography processing and printing.
I sold quite a few pictures — my first to Trains Magazine in 1971 of trains climbing the mighty Curve — but never made much money at it.
A small weekly newspaper called City/East began in Rochester about that time and it was a class act, so I tried selling photos to them.
The co-publisher (and only ad-salesman, the publisher’s husband) was interested in sportscars (he had a 356 Porsche), and he knew I was interested too.
He asked if I knew anyone who could write sportscar racing coverage. I didn’t, so I suggested maybe I could try it.
And so began a three-year stint of writing sportscar racing coverage for City/East newspaper. I also turned in a major story every two weeks to cover the dead time between races. They wanted me to, and every story included a photograph taken by me.
I confined my coverage to three tracks: Watkins Glen; Mosport near Toronto, and Lime Rock in Connecticut — four if you include St. Jovite north of Montreal; although I never wrote up any races from there. (I also attended a few races at the old Bridgehampton track out Long Island.)
This was the time of some of the greatest sportscar racing ever: Can-Am and Trans-Am.
Can-Am were unlimited sports-racing cars; two seats with usually a hot-rodded light-weight aluminum Big-Block Chevy supplying the power.
Trans-Am was the ponycars; Mustangs and Camaros; and the best Mustangs were supplied by stockcar racing-entrant Bud Moore of Spartanburg, S.C.
Both series came to naught: the Can-Am falling to turbocharged Porsche domination, and the Trans-Am taking in the small European manufacturers (Alfa, BMW, etc.) when the Detroit factories pulled out.
It was the end of Detroit involvement in sportscar-racing — the end of the Detroit V8.
Quite a few drivers were also killed — including two I had interviewed.
So I was losing interest.
And my attempt at making money at it was crashing mightily in flames. Over the years I sold probably 30 nationally published photos, but that was hardly enough.
Motor Trend Magazine wanted to talk to me, but I wasn’t interested in moving to L.A. (And the guy they hired lasted about a year.)
We also bought our first house, a nice-looking antique at 323 N. Winton Rd. in Rochester, based on Linda’s income, since I had no income. It needed a lot of work.
I began to look for a “real job;” i.e. one not as a freelance photographer or writer. It was obvious that to succeed at either you had to develop a large coterie of contacts, which I was no good at.
I also was hardly ever given trackside photographer’s passes, so that most of my published photos were from behind the fence. A couple times I was given photographer’s passes, but never at Watkins Glen, although once they gave me a pit-pass, so I flew a picture of Jackie Stewart in his Formula-One Tyrrell in Road&Track.
I also was given a trackside pass once at Lime Rock, but that was primarily because Warren Agor from Rochester was the lone Trans-Am Camaro holdout. (Trans-Am had the ferriners by then.)
My angle was photographing scenery punctuated by racecars. Watkins Glen could be scenic, if you knew where to shoot; but it was otherwise dead.
The Canadian tracks were extraordinary, especially St. Jovite.

(This is probably the News-Journal.)

I began circulating resumes to ad-agencies, and interviewed at a few. One guy was exasperated he couldn’t hire me, but he couldn’t afford another person.
So my search for a so-called “real job” went nowhere; except our new neighbors on Winton Road were both bus-drivers for Regional Transit Service, so suggested I apply there.
It was only supposed to be temporary, but my bus-driving stretched 16&1/2 years — although I was tiring of it.
What I liked most about it was the actual bus-driving. The clientele was rather frightening, and management a bunch of jerks.
The money started pouring in. At first my income was larger than Linda’s, and our union-contract had a cost-of-living escalator, so my income kept ratcheting up.
But the cost-of-living escalator was dumped, and Linda’s income pulled even. She then passed.
But all that changed when I had what many consider a non-event: my stroke, October 26, 1993.
And no matter what the zealots may wish, a stroke is a life-changing event.
Linda had to say goodbye to the person she married, and he was replaced by a feeble approximation of the person I previously was.
Recovery was bog-slow; it’s learning how to live on what’s left of your brain — seven cylinders, I always say.
Even now, 14 years hence, I am left with compromised speech, clumsiness, and poor balance.
As a stroke-survivor I was reduced to earning chump-change; peanuts compared to Linda.
Have a stroke and be forced to retire on disability from Valero, and that will be a major life-change.
A little over two years after the stroke I began employment at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper — the best job I ever had.
A job-counselor at Rochester-Rehab suggested he could try getting my bus-driving job back, but I wasn’t interested.
Employment at the mighty Mezz lasted almost 10 years. I got cycled through various duties, and ended up doing the Messenger web-site; a good match, since it meant exercising what gray-matter remained such that I could determine to a small extent what that web-site looked like.
But I was reduced to being a dependent.
I have to let Linda make the phonecalls, since I have speech-difficulty doing so.
And now the tables are turned somewhat, with Linda chasing the cancer-Jones.
But I still am baggage. I still fag out and have to lay down.
My ability to science things out ain’t what it was, so I get easily frustrated.
So Linda has to cover for me, and parry the exasperation.
So 40 years hence: I don’t feel I made the wrong decision. Linda’s not a hottie. I could have married a hottie and done a lot worse.
Linda always cries at weddings; the protagonists have no idea.
But of course none of this makes any difference when I choose to use a different toothpaste than my famblee — and continue to use the wrong ‘pyooter-platform, running shoes, snowblower, and on-and-on, ad infinitum, as it was in the beginning, ‘tis now and ever shall be, world without end, amen, amen.
If I switched back to Crest and/or goosestepped with the OxyContin®-King, that would be a major life-change; forced disability retirement isn’t.

So will we make 50 years? Probably.
Linda seems to think I’m worth it despite the madness, and the accumulated wisdom of poo-pooing relatives far away who aren’t involved (except to pass judgment).
So it depends on whether either of us tank in the next 10 years.
But we’re only in our early 60s, so I doubt it.

“Mother-Dear” is my mother. “Ted Hinderer” is my sister Betty’s (Elz) first (of four) husband. “ “Carol Button” is my wife’s brother’s first (of four) wife. “Peggy” is my baby-sister; she was born in late 1961; I am the first, born in early 1944. “Tim-oooo” is my brother Tim born in 1954. He had Down Syndrome, but lived at home. He is visible in the third pik saying “none of your lip.” He used to imitate the Three Stooges.

“National Clothing Company,” my first employer out of college, was in Rochester. It’s long defunct.

“The TR250” is a 1968 Triumph TR250 sportscar. “The Beast” was my first car, a 1958 Triumph TR3 sportscar that I had during my final year at college. It was very powerful — an old racecar.

“The Frejus” is my 10-speed Frejus Tour de France bicycle. I still have it. Frejus is Italian — but compared to current bicycles is quite heavy.

The “mighty Curve” (Horseshoe Curve), west of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is by far the BEST railfan spot I have ever been to. Horseshoe Curve is a national historic site. It was a trick used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to get over the Allegheny mountains without steep grades. Horseshoe Curve was opened in 1854, and is still in use. (I am a railfan.)

“The Big-Block Chevy” is a V8 motor brought to market about 1965; first displacing 396 cubic inches. Later enlargements ran to 427 and 454 cubic inches. It was a truck-motor, but also applied to cars as a hot-rod motor. It’s much larger than the V8 Small-Block, which came to market in the 1955 model-year at 265 cubic inches — later enlarged to 283 and then 327 and finally 350 cubic inches. (There have been other displacements, like 302 cubic inches in Trans-Am.) Both motors are still in production, although the Small-block has been enlarged yet again and heavily modified. It’s in the Corvette. The Big-Block is no longer available in a car; only as a crate-motor (something you install yourself). It’s also available in trucks. The Big-Block came in displacements of 430 cubic inches and up in the Can-Am, and cranked about 6-800 horsepower; with gobs of torque. But it was no match for the turbocharged Porsches.

“Bud Moore” used to drive NASCAR in the early years. He later became an entrant with others driving for him. He entered the Trans-Am because his cars could smash the competition by reflecting NASCAR experience.

“The News-Journal” is the Wilmington News-Journal newpaper, the daily newspaper in Wilmington, DE.

My siblings, unlike me, are “zealots,” tub-thumping born-again Christians in the mold of Jerry Falwell. Therefore I am inferior. They claim a stroke is nothing compared to being “born-again.”

My younger brother in northern Delaware works at the “Valero” oil-refinery, where my father worked, although at that time it was “Flying-A.”

“Rochester-Rehab” is Rochester Rehabilitation Center in Rochester, where I did post-stroke rehabilitation.

The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired two years ago.

My wife (Linda) has lymphatic cancer. It’s treatable — she will survive.

A loud famblee argument has surfaced about “hottie.” I follow the old definition where “hottie” equaled a slut. But all my Christian-zealot relatives loudly declare that “hottie” has become a symbol of Christian virtue and attractiveness.

I am loudly criticized by all my siblings for using the wrong toothpaste, ‘pyooter-platform, running shoes, snowblower, ad infinitum. As such I am adjudged inferior and reprehensible.

“OxyContin®-King” is Rush Limbaugh.