Not (Always) Fit for Public Consumption

By Robert Page

Dive into the wild and unforgettable journey of growing up in the 80s and 90s with Not (Always) Fit for Public Consumption. Follow the witty and candid observations of the author as he navigates the rough streets of Chicago and transitions into the fast-paced world of corporate America.

From the thrills of music and adventure, like being

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Page
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088145678

Book preview

Not (Always) Fit for Public Consumption

Robert Page

To Kathleen,

who read this book and said,

It’s good, but please don’t let anyone ever read this.

I took it as a challenge.

You are the yin to my yang.

I wouldn’t trade our marriage for the world.

A few people asked me why I wrote a book. I am not sure I have the answer to that. I think maybe I did it to keep my memories alive. As you grow older, early memories seem to fade away and are replaced with more recent events. It gets harder every day to remember life before I married Kathleen and before we had the girls. So many things have happened in our years together—it’s hard to remember them, much less the twenty-five years prior to that.

My kids and I recently had a conversation about how everyone thinks the next generation has it easier than they did. My kids strongly disagree. They think they have had it harder than I did. At first, I thought that was BS. After a while, I realized they might be right. While they didn’t have the gangs and inner-city chaos to deal with that I did, they had two years of not going anywhere, not seeing anyone, and literally being trapped in the house with their parents, all due to a fucking virus.

I think back to when I was thirteen. There were no cell phones. Actually, chances were that you shared a landline with the people in your house. Can you imagine four people sharing a phone? That’s crazy talk. The internet was just being born. There were no video chats. Emails were like Wow! The anchors on Channel 7 News in Chicago asked each other What is the internet? It was that new. The TV only had five stations: three were prime stations, plus Fox and WGN, which were considered a joke.

My kids have access to every form of content that was ever created, at their fingertips, at all times.

But some things never change. Despite having Spotify and YouTube, they both love vinyl records and have countless T-shirts of their favorite artists. They both love music and going to concerts. It makes me so happy to see them starting to do the things that I love to do.

Everything transitions. I don’t think their childhoods are easier—they are just different. I don’t think I would trade mine for theirs. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t trade theirs for mine either. We all try to make the best out of our situations.

Times have changed. Attitudes have shifted. Some people have even matured—not me really, but some people. Like most everyone, there are some moments I am less than proud of. I grew up in the pre-cancel culture. What was OK then is not OK now. I recognize that, but I also want this book to be honest. So, before you cancel me, please understand I am just human—flaws and all. This book will surely show that.

I wanted to look back and know I made the best out of this situation called life. I wanted to laugh more than I cried. I wanted to experience as much as I could.

And I did. Moments both good and bad. Some of the worst experiences impacted my life in ways I wouldn’t change.

I wrote this book because, like everything else, I just wanted to experience what it was like to write a book.

If I like it, I’ll write few more.

The names have been changed to protect, well, me.

Contents

Damn the SPAM

Goodbye, City Life

The Crystal Ball Says Alice

I’m a Fucking DEA Agent

She Bit Me at 11,000 Feet while Free-Falling 140 MPH

Dating in the 90s

I Discover Kryptonite on the Endless Mile

Nothing like Being Hated

I Hit My Girlfriend with a Major Kitchen Appliance

The Breast Christmas Party

Mr. Smith Marries Us

Congratulations

Welcome to Hell

Tree Leader

Swimming with Sharks

Lionel Ritchie, Meatball, and a Plane Full of Head-Banging Nut Jobs

Family Traditions and Home Depot

Epilogue

About the Author

Want to see more?

Damn the SPAM

I’ve read a fair number of biographies and always wondered why they go so far back—that "Dad’s dad came over on the Mayflower" sort of shit. No way the author remembers that crap. So, for my book, I am going to give you the briefest family history, not only because I wasn’t there, but also because I’m not 100 percent certain that I have the facts right. And, frankly, that’s their lives, not mine. This story is about me growing up and what life was like growing older in the 80s, 90s and beyond.

Away we go …

Dad was raised by a single mom, my grandmother Greta. Greta was a big woman, and legend has it that she kicked many of her lovers’ asses. She would drink too much and then physically kick their asses and throw them out of the house.

My dad, Donald, met my mom, Peggy, when she was a seventeen-year-old girl from Ohio who was living by herself in Chicago. Yes, the circumstances are suspect, but, as the story goes, my grandmother was at the laundromat one day, and Mom was there at the same time. They started talking, and my grandmother said, You would be a great fit for my son.

My mom went home with my grandmother, and, somewhere in there, Mom and Dad got married, had a son (my brother, Randall) and never looked back.

I was born about eight years later, in 1969, in Chicago, Illinois. I was a round, happy, little kid. Our house was on Drake Ave: three bedrooms, nice basement, big yard and a one-eared Samoyed named Sam. One day, when I was about five, I was standing at the top of a long flight of steps, and Sam (who weighed seventy pounds) knocked me down the stairs. My brother claims that a week later I bit off Sam’s ear in an apparent act of revenge. I am in no position to refute those facts and can only say that the dog struck first. That is one of the few stories I recall my brother telling me about the years when I was younger. He would always remind me, You bit my dog’s ear off, calling me a little monster or what have you.

My dad was a factory worker, and my mom worked a few jobs here and there to help make ends meet. While she was working, I would be at my grandmother’s house. She watched me until my mom trusted that my brother was old enough to ensure that he wouldn’t kill me.

I have fond memories of Greta. She lived right around the corner from us. She always had a candy jar full of Halls. Yeah, the cough drops. One of my earliest recollections is going to her house and sucking down Halls like they were candy (and why not—they were in a candy dish). I was seven or so and taking cough medicine by the handful. No one worried. Maybe it was by design to mellow me out, who knows. But I have to say, although I always remembered going to her house, I never remembered going home.

When we were growing up, our neighborhood, like so many others, had its own personality. The Accardo’s lived down the street from us. I met Mr. Accardo a few times, as one of his sons was in my grade. I am not sure if he was connected to the mob (as rumored), but I do know that no one ever screwed around with any of the Accardo family. They lived right across from Patrick Henry Grade School. Henry (what we called the school) was different because its playground was 100 percent concrete and surrounded by a black wrought iron fence. Every sport was played on concrete. Ever get tackled on concrete? Ever slide into second base on concrete? Let me tell you, it toughens you up.

My family lived just down the street from the school, so we had a front-row seat for all the injuries. Many a broken bone came from that playground.

The Fourth of July was a special holiday at Henry. A few years earlier, someone came up with the great idea that it would be fun to have half of the kids stand on one side of the field and the other half stand about fifty yards away and then shoot fireworks at each other. It became an annual ritual. If you had graduated from Patrick Henry Grade School, chances were that you went to Roosevelt High School, and so this tradition in the neighborhood would have not only the seventh and eighth grade kids participating but another 100 kids from the high school too. That’s 150 kids squaring off with roman candles, bottle rockets, and anything else they could find.

My brother participated. I just watched. Around nine o’clock at night they all lined up like in Braveheart and started shooting at each other. The good news was that the fireworks were coming from so far away that you had a pretty good chance of dodging them. The bad news was that there were lots of incoming projectiles, not to mention that you were distracted trying to light the wick of your own firework to fire back. A few crazies had to show up with things like M-80s, which could easily blow your fingers off, and they would hurl them at the other team. The neighborhood would watch from afar. We could see half of it from our front porch. It illuminated the sky like the aurora borealis. We had the added bonus of seeing the kids running past our house screaming because they had just been hit by something. I don’t remember anyone getting seriously hurt, but that was the kind of neighborhood it was. Rough.

In winter, we would go to various friends’ houses to play football. We would stay out so long that our blue jeans would freeze solid. I remember getting rashes on my legs where my icy jeans scraped against my skin.

Our summertime sport of choice was called Smear the Queer. I have no idea why it was called that as it had nothing to do with sexual identity. The whole idea was eight to fifteen people would just constantly fight over a football. No teams, no score. It was like rugby, I guess, only without a purpose or goal. Kids were rough—kicking, punching, biting, whatever. Not bad enough to break bones but enough to make you drop the ball. If you gave up the football, you were the puncher instead of the punchee, so it all kind of balanced out. We had so much fun playing that stupid game. I can remember my brother (he was around fifteen at the time) playing in our side yard with his friends and destroying the grass. My father, being the grass purist that he was, almost killed him. His beautiful lawn had gone from green to mud in under two hours.

I guess what I am trying to get across is that life was a lot of fun. A lot of craziness happened there, but it was semi-controlled craziness. No serial killers. No predators to speak of. Parents didn’t worry about their kids being out late. It felt safe—even with the occasional neighborhood drama. For example, I remember one summer when someone was gunned down across the street. Neighbors said he owed money to someone and that someone was waiting for him when he tried to sneak into his house late at night. But that guy wasn’t innocent, and no one else got hurt, so it was just a thing that happened.

Most of the neighbors knew each other and hung out. There seemed to be countless kids. My parents mostly hung out with the Movihilles across the alley. They had a couple of kids going to high school and were a strong Irish Catholic family. Jim and Jean were the parents and were nice to us.

The Movihilles knew the Nicodemis family and encouraged them to move into our area. The Nicodemis family was made up of the dad, Vincent; his wife, Lydia; and their son, Giuseppe. Giuseppe was my age. I don’t remember a whole lot, as I think I was maybe seven years old at the time, but I do remember the dad kicking the crap out of his son in public a few times over very minor things. One time, Giuseppe didn’t cross at the crosswalk, and his dad saw it from their front window. He came flying out of the house, threw the kid up against a car, and beat the hell out him with his closed fists while yelling about the importance of crossing at the corner. It was extreme to say the least.

I remember they had a really nice house with a huge bar. This was the disco era, and I got the feeling that Vincent and his wife were really living the lifestyle.

The Nicodemis family instantly fit in with everyone in our area. They had a ton of parties, which our family would always go to. Giuseppe and I would hang out and play pool, or whatever game was our favorite board game at the time, while everyone got drunk at the bar. All seemed good.

On Christmas Eve, the year they moved in, I remember my brother calling my parents and telling them to come quick to the TV in the living room. My brother yelled at me (as he often did) to go away and go find something to do. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew it was something serious. I could tell by the tone in his voice. He then shooed me into my room and closed the door as my parents came in asking what was going on. Channel 5 was on and had interrupted whatever program was on at the time.

Vincent and his family were on the way home from his mother-in-law’s house after an evening celebrating Christmas. As they drove home, someone flagged them down who needed help with a flat tire. Vincent got out, and the man pulled a gun and told him to step away from the car and leave his keys, his wife, and Giuseppe, who was in the back seat. Vincent complied. The man took off in the car, and Vincent was left standing in the middle of the street at nine at night on Christmas Eve in a snowstorm as his wife and child were kidnapped.

The police found the car before midnight. It was pulled off the road just a few miles away. Vincent’s wife was shot in the head and stuffed under the dashboard. Giuseppe was in still the backseat, alive and in shock. The crime made national news instantly, sensationalized by the brutality of the crime and the fact that it happened so close to the holiday, not to mention that this was all because someone was trying to help out a stranded person.

The murder shook the neighborhood. I was very young, but I was old enough to kind of understand what had happened. I remember the police interviewing everyone. I remember the funeral. I remember Vincent being devastated.

I also remember the police, my parents, and the Movihilles standing in our kitchen after an interview, and the police telling them that Vincent had his wife murdered. They said they couldn’t prove it, but they knew it. The adults in the room went apeshit. How can you say that? You don’t know them! They loved each other. They were a good family. And on and on.

The police said, We understand, but we are telling you, he did it. My parents were agitated. The Movihilles were enraged. They told Vincent what was going on. In their minds, I think they thought the police weren’t looking in the right place.

Vincent took his son and moved up to Wisconsin almost immediately. He opened up a bar on a lake with the life insurance money. My family went to see them a short while later. I remember the bar and the lake were nice. Giuseppe was different; he was quiet and wouldn’t talk. I ended up playing pinball while he just sat at the bar looking off in the distance.

About ten years later, the killer who shot Vincent’s wife had a fight with his girlfriend. The fight was bad enough that she went to the cops and told them what he had done. She said her boyfriend and Vincent had arranged it all and that the killer had confessed the whole thing to her previously. Vincent got twenty years in jail. I figure Giuseppe must have been about fifteen when his dad was arrested for murdering his mom.

Outside of that year, Christmases are my earliest and happiest family memories. We decorated the house and tree as a family, listening to Brenda Lee on an 8-track. My dad and mom didn’t come from money, and how they were able to create such a wonderful life for us was nothing short of a miracle. There were never any presents visible before Christmas morning. My folks always stayed up late and wrapped presents till the wee hours just to add to the fun of us waking up and seeing more presents than you can imagine.

Every Christmas, my brother and I would be up first, but we weren’t allowed to touch anything. The presents were too numerous to all fit under the tree, and they stretched across the living room floor. You had to carve a path to get to the couch, where we would turn on TV and watch Bugs Bunny cartoons.

My parents were always up soon after we were (I’m sure with some help), and my dad would watch cartoons with us while my mom made Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls. Christmas music played in the background. We would elect one person to hand out presents and then proceed to destroy the living room. There was so much wrapping that you couldn’t see the floor. It bordered on obscene—or bliss. It is a fine line.

My dad had a dozen roses delivered to my mom every year on Christmas morning as we were opening presents. He never missed.

Summers were spent going to a lake in Wauconda, Illinois, almost every weekend with my parents’ other set of friends. These friends had a motorboat, and everyone would water ski and fish. They always packed a few Weber charcoal grills and a ton of food. I think there were three families total, maybe twenty-five people including us. Each couple had kids around my brother’s age.

In addition to going to the lake on the weekends, the couples would get together at other times and play cards, drinking till the early hours. I remember falling asleep while leaning against a wall as I watched them play cards.

They were all very close, but one day something happened. I woke up in the morning to my parents crying. I was sure either my brother or I had done something really horrible.

Dad and Mom had gone out to dinner with their friends the night before, leaving my brother at home to watch me. Apparently, during dinner, a fight broke out. I believe it had something to do with an affair between the couples. Whatever happened ruined all their friendships and at least one marriage.

I never saw any of those people again, despite all those years and all those late nights. One day it was all good. The next day it was all gone.

One downside of living in the city was that our house got robbed a lot. We got ripped off more times than I can count. If you left your bike out, chances were that it would be gone in the morning. It was that bad. Car stereos being ripped off was a common occurrence. But, every now and then, someone would go too far.

There was a kid three doors down who had a habit of ripping people off in the neighborhood. His last name was Brown, and he lived with his mom in what we called the Cracker Jack house (because it was perfectly square like a box of Cracker Jacks). Anyway, one day he must have ripped someone off he shouldn’t have. Every kid in six blocks who was age ten to nineteen decided he had to go.

They gathered outside his house like a mob at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday, throwing rocks and bricks at the house and demanding he come out. When he didn’t come out, they lit his garage on fire, burning the family car inside. Just as they started to set the Cracker Jack house on fire, the police showed up. Some of the kids scattered; others kept at it. Finally, the Brown kid jumped out a first-floor window and started running as fast as he could, down the gangway and into the alley behind the house where the garage was still