Kitselman’s birthday

Gail Kitselman. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

Every morning I usually get up early enough to hear Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac.
The classical-music public-radio station out of Rochester (NY) I listen to airs it about 8:20 a.m.
It usually grates this retired newspaper employee because Garrison, who majored in English, is always “entitling” things, like poems, books, whatever.
At which point I scream “Entitled to what?”
“Today is Tuesday, August 12th, 2014,” he said yesterday morning.
He then started listing various birthdays, Zerna Sharp, the person behind the “Dick and Jane” readers, Cecil B. DeMille, etc.
“It’s also Kitselman’s birthday,“ I said.
Gail Kitselman is one of my first girlfriends, not the first, but the first I felt serious about.
Her mother thought I was wonderful, but her father, a highly-paid executive, quite-rightly felt I was a waste; that I’d never amount to anything.
I met Kitselman in a roundabout way, after driving her and friends to visit their basketball-coach in a distant hospital.
I took Kitselman on various dates. The ones I remember are -a) a day-long sojourn to 59th-Street beach in Ocean City, NJ, and -b) to a nearby amusement-park in southeastern PA.
That amusement-park closed long ago. 59th-Street beach is the finest beach in the entire known universe.
Ocean City had a boardwalk, and we walked it after dusk holding-hands.
We had a really great time, and Kitselman wanted me to kiss her when we got back home. But I couldn’t do it.
I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations, where no girl would have anything to do with me.
My relationship to Kitselman was my senior year of high-school, and we drifted apart when I started college.
Kitselman was still in high-school. She was Class of ’64; I’m ’62.
The last time I saw Kitselman was in that high-school.
She didn’t wanna continue if I was 400+ miles away, distracted by other college girls.
So now I wonder if Kitselman is still alive.
I say that because my beloved wife, who would have made 100 had she not developed cancer, is GONE. —Her mother is still alive at age-98.
Kitselman and I would have been a difficult match. I was too messed up, and Kitselman wasn’t.
I never amounted to anything because I was too messed up.
I always felt I was borderline insane compared to my wife; like my wife was the sane one.
Kitselman used worry she was too thin, that she didn’t fill out her clothes.
She also worried she’d get varicose veins in her legs like her mother.
But Kitselman was really great person, to parry me screwed-up as I was — and still am, probably.
So now I wish I’d kissed her, like I carry a debt to fulfill.
We had a great time at the seashore, but I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations.

• “Q” stood for Quincy, her maiden-name.

Virginia Twaddell

(“twah-DELL”)

Ginny in ’62.

In December of 1957, when I was 13, soon to be 14, my family moved from suburban south Jersey to suburban northern Delaware.
I was in eighth-grade.
It was because my father had got a new job that paid much more than his old job.
My father could have gone to college. He apparently even skipped a grade in school.
But his parents, my paternal grandparents, wanted him to get a job as soon as he graduated high-school.
He was graduating into the Depression.
His first job was supposedly as a caddy at a golf-course. He also mowed and did maintenance.
Other jobs may have followed, but the first I remember was in a shipyard on the Delaware River in nearby Camden, which is across from Philadelphia.
It wasn’t a large shipyard, like Sun Ship in Philadelphia. They built tugboats and mine-sweepers.
A family moved in two doors from us, and the guy worked in Texaco’s Eagle-Point oil-refinery south of where we lived.
That guy got my father a job in that refinery, and it lasted a few years.
Then Tidewater-Oil (Flying-A) built a new oil-refinery in Delaware, and they were looking for workers.
My father joined as an Inspector.
That was 1956, and required a daily 100-mile commute to get there from our home in south Jersey.
So we decided to move to a new suburban development in northern DE.
The move was traumatic for me. I was being ripped out of a familiar life and friendships.
I would have to start anew.
Northern DE was also perceived as a backwater of the vast Delaware Valley. This was partly because a turgid educational-TV station came out of Wilmington in northern DE.
The educational-TV station was boring compared to the three network TV stations out of Philadelphia.
What I didn’t realize then, but realize now, is I was moving to a better life.
Free of “rumbles” (fights) and hard-rock DA greasers manning switchblades and zip-guns.
The kind of world Springsteen sings about.
It was also free of trollop wanna-bees.
I didn’t move when my parents moved. I stayed behind in south Jersey at my grandparents’ digs in Camden.
I’d take the bus out to my old suburb, so I could continue attending my south Jersey high-school.
This arrangement lasted through December, when I finally moved to DE toward the end-of-the-month.
This was so I could attend the last day of my DE school before Christmas-vacation.
That last day was also the last day my DE school would attend their original school in our district.
A new junior-high had been built to accommodate the post-war baby-boom, and we would transfer there in January.
Previously high-schoolers from our district went to a city high-school in Wilmington.
Our class was among the first to make this change.
A few years later our new high-school was built, and we transferred there.
I quickly learned who all the boys were lusting after: it was Virginia Twaddell.
And she wasn’t much of a sexpot, not like south Jersey.
She was cute and attractive, and recognized she was class sexpot.
But it wasn’t like she milked it as the trollops did in south Jersey.
Northern DE was DuPont-land; our neighbors were mainly DuPont engineers.
It was a much more classy setting than south Jersey, and Virginia Twaddell reflected that.
Virginia was the younger sister of a less-attractive girl that graduated in my high-school’s first graduating-class; 1960.
I and Ginny are Class of ’62, the third class.
My high-school class has been very good at reunions. They hold one every five years.
I’ve been to a few, and so has Ginny.
Ginny was head cheerleader while we were seniors.
Ginny married a guy from the class behind ours, yet continued being the class sexpot.
She seemed a bit put-off by this.
I remember attending a reunion Ginny also attended, but I couldn’t talk to her. She was still the class sexpot, and I’m a graduate of the Hilda Q. Walton School of sexual relations, where no girl would have anything to do with me.
But in 2012 I attended my 50-year high-school reunion, and we visited our high-school, which still stands.
I noticed a lady who looked somewhat familiar, so I asked her name.
Surprise-surprise! It was Virginia Twaddell, and here I was talking to her.
At age-68, she was no longer a sexpot, although I’m not sure she ever was.
It’s just that all the boys lusted after her, including me.
Despite her not being a south Jersey slattern.

• “Zip-guns” were hand-made guns, usually made from car-antennas; the antenna being the gun-barrel. A .22-caliber bullet could be shot through a car-antenna. “Switchblades” were folding pen-knives operated by a button. When threatened, a greaser might flip open his switchblade, grist for Springsteen.
• “Q” stood for Quincy, her maiden-name.

Cross not a Hughes, Part-4:

Sometime in the early ‘80s we got our first color-TV.
I know color-TV had been around since about 1956, but I didn’t think it was worth it.
With the coming of cable-TV, and Sony’s Trinitron, I decided color-TV was worth it.
In fact, for years my wife and I had no TV at all. Our first TV was a black-and-white Sears portable with rabbit-ears.
There was Senator Sam wagging his craggy finger at John Dean: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
We probably got that TV just so we could view the Watergate hearings.
Hearings over, that TV went back into disuse, except for the news.
My TV viewing us still pretty much the same: just the news, and not all of it.
So out to a small suburban TV store just east of Rochester (NY) to buy a Trinitron.
It was called “Suburban TV.” I guess they also did repairs.
I walked out with a Sony Trinitron, my first color-TV.
I plugged it in when I got home, and NOTHING.
I dorked around, but still NOTHING.
Back to Suburban TV.
They too tried it; NOTHING. But their demonstrator worked.
“It looks like you need a new channel-selector, Mr. Hughes. It’s guaranteed, but we’ll get it in about two-three weeks.”
“Wait a minute!” I yelled. “I just gave you guys $475; I think I’m entitled to a working TV.”
They were terrified; I was scaring off customers.
“You got one here that works,” I screamed. “Why can’t I have that one? I shouldn’t have to wait two-three weeks.
I work for Regional Transit Service, I’ll blast your store’s name all over my Drivers’ Room. No one from Transit will patronize your store.”
I walked out with their demonstrator, the Trinitron that worked.
I left their store-manager a quaking mass.
So now I wonder if I could grandstand like that since my wife died, leaving me with no confidence at all.
Probably.
So far I’ve recounted three previous incidents of not crossing a Hughes.
I guess it’s still in there; in each case my grandstand reaction was totally unplanned.
But with my wife’s death I feel like I have no confidence at all.

• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.

Mess not with a Hughes, Part-3:

Over 44 years of marriage, my wife and I have had various banks.
My wife is now GONE, and left me with the last bank we had, Canandaigua National Bank.
We were both working for Lincoln-Rochester bank when we got married; she as a teller, and I as a management-trainee.
So we banked at Lincoln-Rochester, since as employees we were fee-free.
Lincoln-Rochester no longer exists. It affiliated with other New York state banks to become Lincoln-First, and that affiliated with Chase Bank in New York City.
I worked for Lincoln-Rochester over three years before I was “laid-off;” which to me was more like being “canned.”
Things had changed. The management position I was training for disappeared, so I was redirected to front-desk duty, which I could hardly do.
The bank was also upset I wasn’t a viper, hot to fleece the customers, especially the small ones. —That I had this despicable  compulsion to “be fair.”
That is I was more a Democrat (Gasp!) than a Kiwanian REPUBLICAN!
So I was cut loose, and drifted listlessly unemployed seven years.
During that time my wife and I moved to another apartment, plus my wife began her life-long career at Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Company.
I also was trying to freelance motorsports photography, and sold a few photographs to nationwide magazines.
I also tried motorsports coverage for a small weekly newspaper in Rochester called City/East.
City/East was sort of an outgrowth of a neighborhood organizing against eminent domain by the state to put in an expressway.
During those seven years we may have switched banks; I can’t remember.
The next bank I remember is Central Trust of Rochester, third largest bank in Rochester.
It was only bank that remained Rochester-based, although it later affiliated with Irving Bank in New York City, and no longer exists.
The other banks in Rochester were Lincoln-Rochester and Marine-Midland. Both affiliated with outside banks during those seven years.
My wife and I also bought our first house during those seven years based on her income.
Our house was at 323 North Winton Road in Rochester, and we lived next to two employees of Regional Transit Service (RTS), both bus-drivers, Kathy Young and her boyfriend, whose name I can’t remember.
My attempt at freelance photography had crumbled, and it seemed my motorsport coverage was going nowhere.
So at the suggestion of Kathy I went to work for the bus-company, as a so-called “temporary-job” driving bus.
That temporary-job lasted 16 & 1/2 years until my stroke in late ’93.
And during that time we were banking with Central-Trust.
My stroke ended my bus-driving, and we may have switched banks before my stroke; I can’t remember.
Some time we switched to First National Bank of Rochester, tiny, but the only Rochester-based bank after Central affiliated with Irving.
I recovered fairly well, and after an unpaid internship sponsored by my stroke-rehabilitation I began employ with the Messenger Newspaper in nearby Canandaigua.
I interned there because I had done a voluntary newsletter for my bus-union while at Transit.
That newspaper was the BEST job I ever had. I refused to go back to bus-driving, although it would have paid better.
We also moved to my current home in West Bloomfield, south of Rochester, in 1990. That house was designed by us.
Marine-Midland had affiliated with HSBC out of Hong Kong, and we switched to HSBC because -a) they had a branch nearby, and -b) HSBC had bought our mortgage originally floated by a savings-bank in Rochester.
We stayed with HSBC the whole time I was at the Messenger, and also paid off our mortgage.
But our safe-deposit box was still in faraway Rochester at the savings-bank that originally floated our mortgage.
Which my wife felt was inconvenient.
So we started looking around for a nearby location for our safe-deposit box.
HSBC had a branch maybe seven miles away, but it was a safe, not a walk-in vault.
Canandaigua National Bank in nearby Honeoye Falls (“hone-eee-oye;” as in “oil”), about four-five miles away, had a vault.
They would rent us a safe-deposit box as part of a package that included a checking-account.
But that checking-account also had online bill-pay, and was otherwise online.
I’m sure HSBC could have done that too, but Canandaigua National Bank is independent; it’s not affiliated with some distant bank.
HSBC’s nearby branch also closed.
First National Bank apparently tanked, so Canandaigua National Bank is the only remaining locally-based bank.
Of course, the banks are always at war with each other, so there could be other banks claiming to be local.
But they’re not as local as Canandaigua, even if not affiliated with a New York City bank.
One day I picked up my paycheck at Transit, brought it home, and made what the bank calls a “split-deposit.”
My paycheck would be cashed, it would pay some bills the bank processed, and deposit $60 to our checking-account.
I took that all to a nearby Central-Trust branch, and transacted it.
I was given a receipt for $60.
That night the bank called. Our checking-account was overdrawn, and bouncing checks.
Apparently the bank had charged back the $60.
Um, I got a receipt!
I went up to the bank, and did what I call a “grandstand.”
I confronted the front-desk personnel, and said I wasn’t leaving until they redeposited that $60.
After all, I had a receipt.
Weeping and wailing and gnashing-of-teeth. They just wanted me out; I was upsetting customers with my yelling.
“But I ain’t leavin’ until you redeposit that $60, and reimburse your overdraft charges.
I worked for a bank once, and I know you can charge your bad-items to redeposit my $60.”
They did, but with my help.
They had apparently lost my Transit paycheck, and charged my checking-account $60 to recover part of their loss.
Don’t mess with a Hughes; you’ll get a grandstand.
Transit stopped payment on the lost paycheck, and issued me another.
With that, Central-Trust recovered their entire loss.
But they probably lost a few customers with my grandstand.

• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• The “Messenger Newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger, from where I retired almost nine years ago. I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern). It was the BEST job I ever had.

Mess not with a Hughes, Part-2:

Back in the ‘80s I was running footraces.
Not marathons.
Five miles or 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) or five kilometers (3.1 miles).
The longest race I ever ran was over seven miles; I had to pace myself.
Back then I weighed about 60 pounds less than I do now; about 130+ instead of 190+.
My running slowed, mostly after my stroke, which occurred in late ’93, and I recovered fairly well.
Maybe four years ago I was down to about 3-4 miles per run.
My last race was in 2010, a 5-K.
By then I was 66, but I could still run.
I started running perhaps two-three years after I started driving bus in 1977.
I kept at it because it was lopping off flab.
My running fell apart after my stroke, because an antidepressant medication had me down to almost a walk.
When I stopped the antidepressant my running picked up.
But I never got back to as good as I had been.
I had to stop altogether when my wife died. She used to take along our dog at a walk while I ran.
Not too long after I started running I started footraces.
I even won my class once because no hot-shots were in it.
My wife did all the winning. Usually she was the only entrant in her class, or one of few.
I never was that good. A race usually divided into three groups: the hot-shots, the mid-packers, and the stragglers.
I was usually among the mid-packers.
My best average was 6:27 per mile; not that fast, but fairly fast. (My wife averaged around seven minutes per mile.)
Not long after I started racing I tried a 10-K at my alma mater, Houghton College (“HO-tin;” not “how” or “who”) in the Genesee (“jen-uh-SEE”) Valley below Rochester (NY).
By then I had been an alumni around 17 years. Other alumni ran too.
By then Houghton had got into intercollegiate sports, although not football. Only soccer and lacrosse and track and maybe a few girls’ sports like basketball.
When I was at Houghton intercollegiate sports were Of-the-Devil.
The sports teams named themselves “the Highlanders,” in honor of the college’s Christian heritage.
They would open each competition with a word-of-prayer. And then get soundly trounced.
Highlanders were running this 10-K, track guys dressed in kilts. I often was faster than them.
That 10-K was the toughest race I ever ran.
Houghton is on the western slope of the vast Genesee Valley.
The race went down to the valley-floor, then up the western slope.
It was awful. I had to stop numerous times on that hill.
I don’t think we climbed the whole western slope, but quite a bit of it.
Some of it was on grass.
I remember running down the runway of the Houghton International Aerodrome, a single runway grass-strip, uncontrolled, that could only accommodate small private planes.
There was a student whose father flew her in in a twin-engine Piper Apache.
I remember hoping nothing landed as I ran down that runway.
Then it was back down to the campus, over twisting footpaths, up to what was then the college athletic-field at that time.
That athletic-field is now something else, and a new athletic facility is being built north of the old campus.
That old athletic-field had a quarter-mile track, and the race finished on that track.
As I rounded the final bend toward the finish, it looked like I could beat the guy ahead of me.
So I kicked into passing-gear.
The guy I wanted to beat tried to trip me.
I got mad.
Never in all my years of racing have I encountered such nastiness.
And Houghton was an evangelical college.
I kicked the guy in the shins, and shoved him aside. I wasn’t taking that kind of crap, biblical or not.
And I beat him.
It was probably the slowest 10-K I ever ran, but also the toughest.
But I wasn’t taking no nastiness from some Bible-beating zealot.

• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.
• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th, 2012. I miss her dearly.
• “Houghton College” is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• The Genesee River, a fairly large river that runs south-to-north across Western New York through the “Genesee Valley,” also runs through Rochester, including over falls, and empties into Lake Ontario. Houghton was not far from the Genesee River.

Mess not with a Hughes

In late 1956 I began attending Delaware Township High-School for seventh-grade.
We called it “Della-Twip.”
Delaware Township High-School was later renamed Cherry Hill High-School, since our township, originally Delaware Township, was renamed Cherry Hill Township.
Erlton (“Earl-tin;” as in the name “Earl”), my home at that time, was originally the center of Delaware Township.
Erlton was a suburb of Philadelphia in south Jersey, founded by a guy named “Earl” in the ‘20s or ‘30s.
But then President Eisenhower visited Cherry Hill Inn in 1956, and after that Cherry Hill became the town center.
Delaware Township High-School wasn’t finished when I began.
Only the academic-building was completed.
Previously high-school students did high-school in nearby Haddonfield (“ha-din-FIELD”), an old Revolutionary-War town just south of Erlton.
Delaware Township High-School was a response to the Post-War Baby-Boom, which prompted double-sessions at my elementary-school, which has since been torn down.
Della-Twip was finished when I began eighth-grade in late 1957.
That is, everything but the shop and mechanical-drawing wing.
We had a gym and cafeteria. Also an auditorium.
Life was fairly simple for me. We still were hiking mud and gravel to get to gym-class and that cafeteria.
But we were no longer crammed in just the Academic-Building.
Life was simple, but there were greasers and bullies and hard-rocks.
The girls were trollops and slatterns.
South Jersey seemed to engender those kind of people.
I was in a class one day, and some bully started harassing me.
He said he’d meet me out in the hall, presumably for a fight.
This bully had a reputation. Supposedly he had tossed another greaser twice-his-size over his head at a dance.
Class ended, I walked gingerly out into the hallway.
Bully was waiting.
He slammed me across the hall into the lockers.
But he made me mad.
I bounced right back and slammed him across the hall into the lockers.
He hadn’t expected that.
He was banking on his reputation as a successful bully.
He thereafter said he’d meet me outside after school, but I never saw any sign of him.

• “Hughes” is me, Bob Hughes, BobbaLew.