To My Boys

By Dennis J. Merlo

You can acquire a new friend, a new home, a new passion in life. Only once are you born into a family, and if you're fortunate enough to find a lasting spouse and bring children into this world, just once are they born into your family. That is special. God is always putting us to the test. Not always do we pass that test; this certainly is true of me. Oftentimes it's not what you do in life, but what's more important is what you've learned from it. From the onset of my childhood, this book reflects that theme and offers my own personal insights into life's valuable lessons. My thoughts include reactions to historic events in my lifetime including JFK's assassination, the cultural revolution, Muhammed Ali, the rock & roll music world, 9/11 and much more. As a parent, you'll find yourself nodding your head yes as you read through this story. This books' second half especially pivots to a more emotional tone after my marriage to Sandy and bringing our two boys, Mark and Bradley, into this world. This story details the strong love for my own parents and Sandy, and certainly I share many fun moments with my sons. But perhaps more than anything, I begin to internalize and agonize over the obstacles and challenges that confront my own two boys. Ultimately, it reveals a much-greater awareness of myself, my own purpose in life, and the profound meaning that Mark and Bradley hold for me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644246870

Book preview

Chapter 1

Bringard Street

If I took a drive down those streets today, the front yard would resemble something the size of a Post-it pad. Back then, it seemed the size of half a football field. We lived in a small red brick house on the far east side of Detroit, Michigan. Large concrete steps led up to our front porch. The small backyard always featured my grandfather’s summer garden. Bordered by a standard chain-link fence with a trash alley behind it, the house included tiny rooms that made for plenty of coziness inside. The aroma of our night’s dinner easily permeated the entire house, and a root cellar highlighted our damp basement. Home.

My parents lived with my dad’s parents for the first seven years of my life. We had no air-conditioning, and it became more of a challenge because my parents lived in the upstairs attic, which played to some extremely hot summers. The houses were very close to each other. Oftentimes, you could learn everything going on with your neighbors by simply rolling down your windows. Conversations, and (sometimes) the yelling and arguments, filled the air most nights. My grandmother always let me know when my next-door buddies, Steve and Gregory, were coming out to play at night. By overhearing the arguments at their house, she knew all too well how much trouble they had gotten into that day.

I called this home from 1952 to 1959, an era of great nostalgia. We had milk-chute delivery each day and Good Humor ice cream trucks with the Good Humor men in their stark white uniforms. I can remember the Good Humor guys on tricycles and pushcarts. During Saturday mornings in the fall, the fresh smell of burning leaves, piled high in the street, filled the air. The huge boulevard trees formed a beautiful canopy creating a tunnellike atmosphere and sense of comfort down the narrow streets.

My kids think we played some really silly and stupid games back in those times. We ran all over those tiny front yards playing Mother May I, tag, and hide-and-go-seek. My grandparents’ driveway became my playground. I threw a rubber ball off the side of the house and played catch with myself for hours. The corner house next door had its chain-link fence, and I wore myself out climbing that damn fence to retrieve my ball. If she were alive today, that next-door lady would still be angrily staring me down.

A summertime tradition saw all the adults sitting on their cloth patio chairs out on their front porch in the evenings. Everyone knew everyone; it was Cheers before we had the television show Cheers. The neighbors came up to you not just to say hello. They wished to talk with you all night long and truly wanted to learn what was going on in the ordinary lives of others.

As I think back to being a small child in the 1950s, I wonder if a more intimate and friendlier life might have existed. This I know for certain: who you’re born to and where you’re born means everything in this world. A lot of us need to give thanks. For me, 15414 Bringard with Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa was a pretty darn good place to be.

Chapter 2

Grandma and Grandpa

Back in the first half of the twentieth century, nearly everyone personified simple, hardworking people that immigrated to this country. With the lack of development in those times, compared to today, what else did they have to do except work? My grandparents were on the far end of that simple spectrum. Their lives revolved almost exclusively around each other; their lone son, Johnnie, and my mom; and eventually, me and my brother.

My grandpa, Angelo, born in 1900 in the very small town of Cuggona near Milan, Italy, came from a family of thirteen brothers and sisters. As well as he could remember, he stopped attending school around the third grade. He always laughed when he told how he was already working for quite a long time well before that age.

He actually served as a cook in the Italian army at the end of World War I. The funny thing is that I never once saw him cook anything in my whole life. Grandpa loved his red meat and had no aversions to a friendly beer or two. And he had his daily shot of whiskey every morning to nearly the day he passed away at ninety-three years of age.

Give me my cicchett, he’d say to my grandma in his broken English. Cicchett is an Italian word sometimes used for shot.

Grandpa was one of the youngest in his family, and many of his siblings immigrated to the Detroit area. He followed suit when he got out of the army and began working physically demanding construction jobs. At twenty-five years of age, he married my grandmother, Louise; she was eighteen at that time. Grandma would say that she really wasn’t that crazy about my grandfather back then. But he owned a car, and that pretty much did the trick.

Grandpa was a quiet guy with a strong build. He stood 5'9" tall (at least that’s what he said) and weighed a muscular 235 pounds at his peak. He bounced around in his work career in the early years, and then came the Great Depression. My grandparents were financially hurting and lived in tough conditions in the heart of the city. Grandma often told the story about how many days they survived on nothing more than bread and water.

Grandpa finally got a break in his forties when Chrysler Corporation hired him as an assembly-line worker. He remained there until retirement. He didn’t make much money, but the automotive benefits enhanced dramatically through the years. In his late years, he joked how his pension check was a hell of a lot more money than he ever made when he formally worked at Chrysler.

Grandpa was a tough guy. He still shoveled the snow in his own driveway until around age ninety and then would do all the neighbors to boot. An all-star landscaper with his handheld cutters from Italy, he often trimmed my parents’ bushes to utter perfection.

There certainly were many times when my grandfather was out of work, but he never took a handout and never expected one. That can’t be said for all today. I’ll tell you this: my grandparents valued every penny they ever earned.

My grandma’s parents were both from Italy, but she was born in America. Truly a sweet person, at just a tiny 4'10" tall, Grandma and her naive look on life would make you laugh without trying. She never had a job outside the home and was so scared that she never learned to drive. She cooked a fabulous spaghetti Bolognese with meatballs, and thankfully, she passed that recipe down to my mom.

My grandmother probably felt out of her comfort zone anytime she stepped away from the house or went out without family and friends. She had the softest of hearts, but she forever was a nervous wreck. As a two-year-old, she spent eighteen months in the hospital due to a bout of tuberculosis. Over her lifetime, and courtesy of my poor dad, my grandmother received testing for every disease known to mankind. My mother always scolded Grandma that nothing was wrong. Still, my grandmother always thought she was dying of something, even though, as an adult, she hadn’t been hospitalized or treated for anything. She lived a healthy life until eighty-eight years of age.

Boy, did my grandmother wrestle with any sort of change, though! For years, she fought going from black-and-white to color TV. When my parents finally decreed that she would have a new color TV set in her house, she loved it, but sheepishly, she didn’t want to admit that. She became transfixed with Lawrence Welk and the soap operas of the day, and she even got me, as a kid, hooked on The Price Is Right. She was one of those people who couldn’t figure out why everything didn’t cost the same in 1980 as it did in 1930.

She specialized in talking on the phone for perhaps even hours at a time. Thank God for unlimited local calling time because she wore out her old rotary phone talking with family and friends. A cell phone battery would have been no match for Grandma. But then I chuckle to myself envisioning my grandma (God bless her) trying to manage any of today’s technology.

Because she played an instrumental role in raising me those first seven years, Grandma always had a special place in my heart. During that time, my mom often worked during the day at Michigan Bell. Just being a normal kid would be enough to drive Grandma crazy. After my parents moved out, they occasionally dropped off my brother, Al, and me at Grandma’s for a two-day vacation. I was about eleven to thirteen and Al about five to seven years of age. Grandma made sure we had all the favorite food we didn’t normally get back at home—custard donuts, candy, all the good stuff. Al and I would race all around the house and stir up the usual mayhem and damage that included our typical fun, such as hitting balls with a real baseball bat and smashing a few overhead lights. It would literally take my grandmother a week or two to recover from those little overnight stays. She would tell my mom, That’s it! That’s the last time they’re staying over! That proved to never be the case. Grandma was a loving person. Without any outside interests, hobbies, or a job, her thoughts and concerns always rested with what my grandfather and dad were up to.

My mom’s parents were early immigrants from Venice, Italy. Regrettably, I don’t have a great deal of memories of them because I was fairly young when they died. They were cut from the same cloth as my dad’s parents and lived the same kind of lives. I’m sure the opportunity to have listened to them share their unique experiences would have further enriched my life.

My dad’s parents lived their lives very conservatively and didn’t take risks. My parents adopted the same philosophy, and in large part, so did I. It was very fortunate that my grandparents were a big part of my life until my forties. I cherished them. In my adult life, whether it was during my weekly cross-town evening drive after work or on a mere phone call, I always felt glad to spend plenty of time with them. It was a welcome highlight in their simple, everyday life, and it might sound silly but one of my proudest accomplishments in life.

Chapter 3

Janola

Stereotypically, Italians can be quite passionate and vociferous when they get together. Janola personified this concept, and he left a real impression on me. My grandma’s older cousin who lived just a mile or so away, Janola, was a frequent visitor to our house. He always loved to socialize, but his wife’s recent passing left him as a lonely guy who reached out even more to talk with friends. Then again, Janola didn’t just talk; he shouted. My grandmother told me his name translates to John in English, but everybody referred to him as Janola.

Janola had to be the loudest, most intense, animated guy I’d ever encountered. He could take the smallest and most irrelevant of incidents and turn them into the most adventurous of stories. He, too, came from the old country, worked tough jobs, and lived blue-collar all the way. Short and stocky, gruff-talking Janola possessed a dark complexion, chiseled jawline and always had a dour look on his face. And yet the guy had a supreme heart of gold. He was gentle as a lamb, but he would scare the hell out of you if you didn’t know him.

New neighbors moved into the corner house next door during the year I turned six. One summer day, as our family sat in the driveway, Janola drove up. In those days, you didn’t arrange to come over; you just showed up. Janola mainly spoke Italian and naturally brought all his passion with him. He talked extremely fast, which made him sound even madder. His frenzied mannerisms caused his face to turn red, his short-sleeved shirt to become untucked, and sweat to stream from his brow.

My grandfather got Janola a drink and invited him to sit down, but Janola really couldn’t talk without standing up. Before too long, his intensity wore us all out. This particular instance resulted in unforeseen ramifications. He was probably embellishing on some typically trivial story along the lines of getting the wrong cut of meat at the local butcher shop. He should have been a stand-up comic because he was hilarious with his insane delivery. He sounded angry, but he wasn’t. So there was Janola, flailing away with his arms, yelling so loud you could hear him three blocks away, parading around the yard like a caged lion—all the while sounding totally out of control.

After a while, to our surprise, a police car pulled up at the foot of the drive, and two stern-looking policemen started walking toward us. We were all scared, but my grandmother seemed frightened to death. Officers, what’s wrong? my terrified grandmother asked. The new neighbors had called the police in fear of our family. The new neighbors hadn’t experienced Janola before, and they thought a heated argument was taking place with Janola ready to kill us all. I remember laughing as I listened to him trying to assure the officers that he meant no harm. Nothing more than a big teddy bear, Janola might have even left our house that day to selflessly perform his standard volunteer work in some old folks’ home.

After my parents moved away, there were just a few more times we saw Janola, specifically when we visited my grandparents. Until the day he died, he never changed or lost a bit of that frenzied energy. I would immediately start laughing to myself the moment I saw him pull up the drive. The show was about to begin. More than fifty years later, I’m still laughing as I write about good ol’ Janola.

Chapter 4

A Little Curiosity

Though none of my shenanigans rose to the level of any arrest warrants, I still got into some trouble as a little kid. Outside truly being someone who could not sit still for a single second, I was another run-of-the-mill boy during those early childhood years in the fifties. I relished the simple pleasures like Dad or Grandpa taking me to the neighborhood park to watch teens play recreational baseball. As young and impressionable as I was as a five- or six-year-old, I looked up to those young teens as though they were actually major league ballplayers.

There were a couple of playful episodes of some note. My buddy David Fisher lived behind our house across the alley, and while playing over there one day, I somehow rammed both my arms through a glass door that led to the back of his house. Mom rushed me to emergency. She remained very calm throughout the ordeal, and this reassured me that everything would be all right. Additionally, I didn’t experience any real pain, so I figured the blood on my arms was pretty cool. I own stitch marks above my right wrist and down most of my left arm. Though they have faded, I still proudly wear them.

The big scandal happened between freckle-faced Linda and me. At five years old, we were in the alley behind her house across the street. We did a silly curious thing that kids of that age sometimes do; we took each other’s clothes off. Damn, I couldn’t believe Linda had freckles over every square inch of her naked body! In some mysterious way, my mom found out, and she was furious. Being just five years of age, I couldn’t fully grasp the gravity of the situation, but I understood something was very wrong. My mother educated me on respecting others in addition to stressing to me to never do anything like that again.

Lesson learned.

And yes, a rubber ball or two finally got off target and a couple of windows were smashed, but that was par for the course. All in all, I was a relatively tame kid. For as long as I can remember, my parents did a remarkably good job of teaching me right from wrong.

Chapter 5

What a Surprise

Uncle Henry never knocked on the door; he just walked into the house. In those days, the doors were usually unlocked anyway. Henry was family all the way. My grandmother had three brothers that all lived within shouting distance, and he was the surprise youngest child in his family by some seventeen years. Henry, his wife, and their two children lived just three blocks away.

My dad and Uncle Henry were extremely close—like brothers growing up together. Henry was my dad’s actual uncle despite being just two years older. Henry wasn’t my uncle, but he sure seemed like one, and I always referred to him that way. Henry and my dad both had factory jobs. Henry worked at Chevy. He used to bring over these football betting cards that he received at work. Those betting cards had point spreads for the weekend’s upcoming games, and you had to perfectly select a minimum of four games correct to be a winner. Baseball was my first love at that time, but these little betting cards fascinated me and created a much-bigger interest for me in football. And after all, who doesn’t enjoy placing a minor wager or two trying to predict football games today?

Outgoing, lighthearted, funny, and friendly, Henry was someone who would immediately get you smiling and make everything seem okay. Almost the exact opposite of Janola, Henry never scared any of the neighbors into calling the police. Instead, Henry strolled by the house all the time. Henry, you want a shot and a beer? my grandfather would say. You got it, brother-in-law, Henry would answer back. He enjoyed a good beer, or two, or three, or four. As far as I know, nobody in my family ever attended any AA meetings. But anytime people in my family got together, drinks and laughs were always plentiful.

Henry was everyone’s buddy. Thirty years later, I worked with a friend, Dan, at Ameritech, and he lived in an east-side Detroit suburb in Sterling Heights. Coincidentally, Henry lived next door to Dan at the time. Dan always kept mentioning how super-friendly Henry was and that every time they sat down together, my uncle made certain they each had a beer in hand. Nothing has changed.

When my family and I visited my grandparents after we moved, Henry still came over all the time. He was a good guy and always a good time. Looking back as an older adult, I regret not venturing out to Sterling Heights and visiting him more often. Sometimes we let family members fade away from our lives too easily. And then all of a sudden, you’re showing up at someone’s funeral, and it’s too late.

Perhaps Henry’s biggest impact on my life occurred one Christmas when I was just six years old. He arranged for a relative of his to dress up as Santa. My parents brought me in my grandparents’ living room that Christmas Eve, and there was Santa Claus dropping off presents. My eyes popped out of my head, and I became too scared to say anything. Henry’s plan easily secured the magic of Christmas for me for many years to come. Hell, I’m sixty-six, and the Christmas magic still burns.

Chapter 6

A Thought on the Fifties

Were those better times in the 1950s? They were much more than just different and simpler. Certainly, they represented a more intimate time. Geographically, it seemed everyone lived just a stone’s throw away. More importantly, on a personal level, people wanted to talk and be with you. Maybe they had nothing else to do. But they could talk and laugh for hours over such nothing topics.

There’s a lesson to be learned from these old folks. They sure didn’t hide themselves behind a computer all night or weekend long, as is often done today. There’s real value to taking a little bit of time and going beyond simply waving or saying hello to friend or neighbor.

People from that era weren’t afraid to express themselves. They gave it to you straight, good or bad; their comments were heartfelt, and they didn’t worry if they might offend anyone. They were real people, none of this robotic, politically correct bullshit.

Guys like Janola and Henry would never make it in anyone’s current corporate world, but they were genuine. In those days, the fun and meaningful activity for people was simply getting together with each other. They did a masterful job of keeping an extended friend and family structure alive.

Maybe, just maybe, those were better times.

Chapter 7

New Digs

In mid-1959, my parents moved away. Not exactly a Grapes of Wrath story, as we moved only twenty miles across town but, for the Merlo family, still a rather harrowing experience. Keep in mind that our entire world (family, friends, work, shopping, etc.) literally existed within a two- or three-mile circle of where we lived. My parents relied heavily on my grandparents and vice versa. None of us within the family adapted particularly well to any change. Sadness engulfed our car as we drove off that summer.

My dad worked for Burroughs (a computer corporation) and received a transfer to a plant in Plymouth, Michigan, some thirty miles away from my grandparents’ home. We settled into a new subdivision in Redford Township, slightly west of Detroit. People considered Redford the boondocks at that time. If you drove three miles west from where we lived, all development came to a halt. Still, it became a nice, well-maintained community, and we proudly stepped into a mammoth twelve-hundred-square-foot house.

I missed all the trees that lined the streets of Bringard; only one corner lot remained saturated with large trees that hadn’t yet been cut down. For us kids, it became our runaway hangout to go and climb, play hide-and-go-seek, and get completely lost.

My grandmother thought, in essence, we were moving to California. One thing was for sure, my parents only made that move because they finally reached the position where they could pay cash for the new house. They didn’t make a lot of money, but they didn’t purchase anything until they had the cash to pay for it. They resisted credit cards as long as they could. They saved twenty-three thousand dollars during those years with my grandparents, and it all went toward our new house on Fenton Street.

Twenty miles across town is no big deal today. People now move to San Francisco, Shanghai, and everywhere in between. I’m a homebody—old-fashioned. I guess I’m boring; Detroit has always been my home, but I think that’s a good thing because it’s allowed me to be physically close to family and friends. Anyway, we saw this as a new beginning, with Grandma and Grandpa never that far away.

Chapter 8

Those Nuns Were Crazy

The fall of 1959 proved to be a challenging time for both my mom and dad. My dad worked as a computer assembly repairman and worried how quickly he would learn his new job. He also worried whether or not he would do a good enough job to thoroughly satisfy his new boss. My brother, Al, had been born just two months prior. With the start of the school year set to begin in under two weeks, my mom found herself immersed in taking care of my brother and frantically tried to get me enrolled in school. As devout Catholics, my parents made the decision to send me to St. Gemma Catholic Grade School, a private school on the far west side of Detroit.

I sure got off to a rough start with the nuns that taught me at St. Gemma’s. Some were senile, some would be arrested today, and some were just plain crazy. In second grade, Sister Ursala had given us homework time during the midafternoon hours of our classroom day. But if you’re a seven-year-old kid who loves baseball, then maybe you trade baseball cards with your buddy across the aisle instead.

I certainly thought I could get away with it. All the kids felt that Sister Ursala, who had to be one hundred and thirty years old, was more or less senile at the time. She later taught me in one of my upper classes in grade school, and I can assure you that her mind was pretty much gone at that point. But on that spring afternoon in second grade, Sister Ursala still seemed sharp enough.

My buddy, Pete, was seated in the aisle to my right, one desk up from me. We were actually swapping cards by sliding them back and forth on the floor. All of a sudden, we were staring at the feet of a nun’s habit. We looked up, horrified by the crossed arms and frighteningly stern grimace on Sister Ursala’s face. Of course, every other student was staring at us as well. It seemed to take just two or three seconds for Sister Ursala to snatch all the baseball cards from Pete and me that we had with us that day and rip them into a thousand pieces.

Maybe today she could be sued for undue emotional harm, but back then, I could only watch. My world as I knew it at that second was over. If only a way existed to retrieve all those pieces and tape them back together. I simply cried and cried and cried. Pete reacted the same way, and Sister demanded that baseball cards never be brought in her classroom again.

There have been many successful satirical plays and productions about nuns over the years. We often see things as funny when they mainly speak to the truth. Those nuns were not just funny, though; they were pretty darn scary. My experiences continued to play out like this as I attended St. Gemma’s from second through eighth grade.

Sister Bernadette, my seventh-grade teacher, was old and (forgive me) quite senile. All the students were to be graded by going in front of the class and reciting the Gettysburg Address by memory, even though Sister Bernadette herself probably didn’t even remember the first line. Most of the kids found it a true challenge. Their presentations sounded overridden with stumbling, mispronounced words, long pauses, fabricated lines, and more as they crawled their way to the finish line. Those presentations didn’t go well at all.

Sister Bernadette sat in the back of the room announcing each student’s grade at the end. Most students received Cs and Ds. I don’t remember who it was, but finally one of my classmates got smart. He knew Sister Bernadette would not catch on to his trick. In quick fashion, he stated just the opening paragraph, which is quite short, and the very last line of the Gettysburg Address. It ended so fast that most people didn’t realize what had happened, including Sister Bernadette. After a short pause, she uttered, Very good, that’s an A. It didn’t take long for others to catch on, and an A became the norm for the remainder of the presentations.

The nuns weren’t the only ones who broadcasted our grades to the rest of the class. The assistant pastor, Father Loren, handed out our quarterly report cards. He was a very imposing guy—broad-shouldered, standing well over six feet tall. Father Loren never cracked a smile. He knocked on parents’ doors and scolded them if he learned they failed to attend a Mass on Sunday. Back in the third- and fourth-grade time frame, we called him The Grim Reaper because he struck the fear of God in everyone, young and old.

Father Loren would sit at the teacher’s desk and call up each child, individually, to the front of the room and have the student stand next to him while he studied the unlucky victim’s report card. The tension palpitated through the air while we all dreaded our turn. After a lengthy perusal, Father would vocalize four or five of our grades to the entire class.

It didn’t matter if you received As or Fs. If this kind of practice happened today, we might all be rich collecting the money from all the lawsuits. Fortunately, I placed at the higher end of the grade spectrum. But some had to bear the embarrassment of those school days. And in those days, it wasn’t unusual to get beat up all over again by your parents once they got the report cards in their hands. My grades, however, always got thumbs-up from my parents.

Many of the nuns were easy to take advantage of because of their advanced age and largely kindhearted nature. Sister Agnes Morris, the principal, was the exception to this rule. She was younger—a scrawny little woman—but still the baddest, meanest lady on the planet. She made her presence known the moment you entered the building on the first day of each school year. The sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were ordered to walk past her single file as she carried out her own dress code inspection. She sent boys home for pants she thought too tight, and she sent girls home if their school uniforms needed lengthening by an inch or two. Keep in mind that those uniforms were