Chick’N Charlie: The Crisis Life—The Story of an Addict and His Family

By Christine Carlisi Manzi

Chickn Charlie is a memoir about a New York family navigating the unchartered waters of post WWII and working to build a good life after the war. Because of the historical upheavals of this time period, the Greatest Generation, full of hope and dreams for their children, did their best to manage the effects of the 60s, rock n roll, and the accompanying drug culture. Unfortunately, this family found itself battling to stem the tide of addiction consuming one of its members.

Filled with artifacts, the book portrays the pain, joy, strength, perseverance, and limitations experienced during this familys struggle. The reader gets a glimpse at the realities of dealing with a beloved son/brother addict.

As America once again faces the scourge of widespread addiction, this very personal story is universal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546232865

Christine Carlisi Manzi

Christine Carlisi Manzi was born and raised in the Bronx, NY. During the course of her 30+ years of teaching, she taught students of all ages, from pre-school to college. She also worked as a Mentor and a Behavioral Counselor in the NYC schools. She spent the bulk of her time teaching middle school students how to strengthen their reading skills and find ways to become lifelong readers. She sang professionally for 30 years as well, starting at the age of thirteen. Her singing career took her from high school dances in the 60s, to rock n roll backstreet bars in the 70s, to dance clubs in the 80s, to weddings, and to the World Yacht and New Years Eve at the World Trade Center in the 90s. Ms. Manzi wrote this book over the course of 20 years as a way to cope with lifes challenges. She recommends that her readers use reading and writing to navigate the trials and tribulations of life. She currently lives with her husband, John, in Westchester County, New York.

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© 2018 Christine Carlisi Manzi. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/24/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-3287-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-3285-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-3286-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903124

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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CHICK’N CHARLIE

The Crisis Life—the Story of an Addict and His Family

For John

For my sister and for all who search for ways to unconditionally love one another.

Contents

Preface

A Letter From My Parents

Chapter 1:     God Bless the Child - Billie Holiday

Chapter 2:     Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Chapter 3:     Body and Soul - Dad’s signature song

ala Billy Eckstine

Chapter 4:     It’s My Life - The Animals

Chapter 5:     So You Want to Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star

- The Byrds

Chapter 6:     While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Beatles

Chapter 7:     Freedom - Richie Havens

Chapter 8:     Helplessly Hoping - CSNY

Chapter 9:     Bridge Over Troubled Waters

- Simon and Garfunkel

Chapter 10:   Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane

Chapter 11:   Take it To the Limit - The Eagles

Chapter 12:   Drown in My Own Tears - Billy Vera

Chapter 13:   Movin Out - Billy Joel

Chapter 14:   Whipping Post - Allman Brothers

Chapter 15:   You Keep Me Hanging On - Vanilla Fudge

Chapter 16:   On the Road Again - Willie Nelson

Chapter 17:   Chemical Love - Stevie Wonder

Chapter 18:   Takin’ Care of Business

- Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Chapter 19:   Homeless - Paul Simon

Chapter 20:   That Smell - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Chapter 21:   The Beat Goes On - Sonny and Cher

Chapter 22:   Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac

Chapter 23:   Circle Game - Joni Mitchell

Chapter 24:   Tempus Fugit - Yes

EPILOGUE/REPRISE

PREFACE

October 2017

I have been writing this book since 1997. In doing so, I have satisfied many needs. I have grieved my mother’s and my father’s death, looked carefully at my past, considered my upbringing, examined the challenges of being a musician, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a teacher. I have looked at the times in which I have lived. I have always found solace, escape, and answers in Reading. Writing has allowed me to ask the questions.

When I started to write, it was out of anger and despair. I was trying to cope and heal. It has taken me so long to finish it, not because I have been waiting to heal fully, but because it really is only with time that we can get a better look at the forces of life we experience. I may have been waiting for an ending, for as an avid reader of fiction, I have come to expect and enjoy the neat little package of story. But, of course, life is so much more complicated than the beginning, middle, and end. In the years that have passed, there have been many endings.

I almost abandoned the telling because it was too painful, too messy, too far from having a light at the end of the tunnel. But, when my beautiful sister, in her never-ending support of me, had a typist put the handwritten evolving first draft onto a disc for easier editing, something changed. A stranger had read My story, my family’s story. She, the typist, told my sister that the book had to be finished because it touched her. She too had family affected by drug use and she couldn’t put the book down; the stories needed telling; how would it all end? I continued to write. The episodes continued, characters died, the ending was still nowhere in sight. More life altering events happened to me and finally, I was able to see an ending for a story that continues in my life and in the lives of so many others.

A LETTER FROM MY PARENTS

My mother and father attached this letter to their will and left it with me whenever they went on a trip. My father read it aloud at my mother’s wake in 1997

To Our Dear Wonderful Children,

We often discuss death, especially when we are about to take trips, and naturally we all laugh it off, but of course one day we will all take the trip and not come back; everyone has to take that trip sometime. We have had a marvelous, fulfilling life with you, our dear children, from the moment you came into our lives you brought untold joy. We had some bad times too, but the good times vastly overruled them, and looking back, there are very few things we would change. Then we were blessed with two fantastic son in laws, who are much more like sons to us, and to put the topping on our already loaded cake we now have four little angels for grandchildren. We have been very fortunate indeed; I should say blessed. Our last wish is of course that you Charles, our dear son, will find yourself a rich and fulfilling life and be happy like your wonderful sisters did! And we know you will! All of you be happy and smile as much as you can, enjoy life to the fullest. It has so much to offer! Remember how we always loved and admired all your beauty and talents. Use them and guard them! They were given to you by God; keep in touch with God, He’s the only one who can really comfort you in all stress. Don’t forget - we loved each and every one exactly the same!!!

Your very loving and proud parents

CHAPTER 1

God Bless the Child - Billie Holiday

I knew that we’d know trouble that morning in the hospital. Red tender face, bulging tiny neck veins, mouth cavernous, as Charlie stood, little arms outstretched, out of reach, in the crib across from me. Antiseptic white engulfing him, he seemed as though he stood stranded on the horizon of the Sahara – me, his oasis. Me, one of several refuges for years to come, swept into the turbulent waters of the crisis life. As I sit here, starting to write this book in 1997, I am worn and bereft, eleven days grieving my lost mother and her water in dry heat. Charlie’s arms still beckon me.

The tonsillectomy was a commonly performed operation in the ’50s. Ask people, now in their senior years, and they will probably be tonsil-less. Most did not find the usual overnight stay, with plenty of ice cream, traumatic or even memorable. But to me and my brother Charlie, it was an event that would mark the real beginning of our lives together.

Charlie lost himself in the real world of pain and fear alone. Although I trembled in my enclosed hospital bed, consoling him with quiet words from my ravaged throat hour after hour, he could not hear me. I croaked out lullabies, told him over and over that everything would be all right, threw touch-less kisses, told him he was loved. His primeval screeching persisted. It was hopeless, for both of us.

In the next memory of that time, I am standing aside, near what seems to be a long cafeteria table in a parochial school lunchroom, gaping at a doctor, my parents and Charlie, a little trio brave. My mother is holding Charlie’s diminutive hand and supporting the back of his neck as he tips his head way back, mouth wide, open like a baby bird. The doctor, with a gleaming mirror attached to his forehead, is reaching down to Charlie’s toes with metal forceps searching for blood clots. The screaming begins again, and no one can stop it. The doctor, sternly admonishing the little boy, finally grabs and pulls up a dangling piece of coagulated blood the size of a toad. Silence.

In subsequent years, those images would connect directly to a recurring crisis at the dinner table. My mother, fork midway to her mouth and dropping to clang upon a plate, wide eyed, reaching into Charlie’s bulging-eyed face, pulling and pulling on bacon, spaghetti, spinach, to free his gagging, panicked throat, while the rest of us stared, chewing. It was always my mother who freed his airways.

Life in our tonsil-less middle class Bronx world went along well enough with no incidents over the next few years with the exception of one. Not finding out about this incident until years later might be why it has come to represent to me one of the major turning points in all of our lives. When Charlie was in the third grade, already having accepted the stifling life of a parochial school student, he told us that he had often been made to sit in the wastepaper basket in the front of his first-grade classroom. He had struggled enormously with the task of learning to read and thought that the trash basket technique was supposed to help him become more serious about learning phonics. He laughed it off as a silly teacher gesture. The impact of this barbaric act didn’t fully register with me until I became a reading teacher twenty years later. To suffer such a degrading experience during the most formative, impressionable time of a young life had to contribute to the development of a whole life. Did we connect his later troubles in the schoolyard, the large nun, in her swaying habit, swinging her giant brass bell to halt the beatings of victimized Charlie, to that wastepaper basket? Did I think about that basket as I watched the uniformed bully repeatedly punch my younger brother in the face? Charlie never stopped chewing his potato chips and smiling, to even lift an arm to protect himself. Did my father, normally a calm and loving man, think about first-grade traumas when, at least twice in my memory, he ran through the sultry streets after my brother to try to make him react to warnings that had been rendered. Charlie running scared…yet laughing all the time, believing life was good…a pattern we’d witness again and again.

Charlie was the third child, the only boy and therefore, the only male to carry on the Carlisi name in my father’s family. My father’s only brother had no children. As was the case in many first and second-generation families, my father’s mother lived with my aunt just down the street. Grandma was a force in our young lives. Faccia Bella, she would say, pinching Charlie’s cheeks and lovingly setting him up as the salvation of the family line. Grandma spoke powerful words to a quiet and less-than-savior-like boy from the time he was born. It was easy to understand Grandma even though she didn’t speak much English. Her facial expressions and hand gestures always conveyed the necessary gist of meaning. Her blue eyes twinkled as she spoke in melodic Italian interspaced with Italianized English. Eventually, she and my widowed aunt lived in our three-family house where Grandma continued her mission until she died. As Charlie peeked beneath the crisp white sheets of every bed in the house to check on the