Greetings from Belleville, New Jersey: Collected Writings -- What They're Saying

 Greetings from Belleville, New Jersey: Collected Writings came up as we were putting together our upcoming reading list, and several members were immediately drawn to its sense of place and memory the way it captures everyday life, humor, and humanity with such warmth and authenticity. It’s the kind of collection that invites reflection, nostalgia, and lively conversation about how our hometowns shape who we become.

Greetings from Belleville, New Jersey

collected writings by Anthony Buccino 

Anthony Buccino created a time machine throu
gh words and stories of growing up the 1950s, 1960s and beyond based on life and growing up in Belleville, New Jersey. 

You don't have to be from New Jersey to enjoy this book, you just need an inclination to remember when chasing the mosquito man and his big blue DDT cloud was a great thrill for kids on their bikes or running in their Keds!

And who can forget the excitement on hearing the bells of the approaching ice cream truck to the neighborhood?

If you remember defrosting refrigerators or the simpler things of times past, you'll enjoy Buccino's essay collection.

More than forty essays and reflections on everything from junior high school bullies to selling pretzels for Ed Strat at Belleville High School football games at Municipal Stadium. This collection includes the Excellence in Journalism award-winning Don the TV man.

Kindle Amazon

New Jersey Writer

Nutley, New Jersey, author Anthony Buccino's stories of the 1960s, transit coverage and other writings earned four Society of Professional Journalists Excellence in Journalism awards. 

He published several collections of essays, photography, military history, and verse. The Pushcart Prize-nominated writer is currently juggling several book projects.

These titles are available on Amazon!

For some free peeks at much of his writing visit: 

Anthony's World.

All those boxes of forgotten stuff

Trying to cut down all the boxes of stored stuff I come across many hand-written drafts of stories I wrote so long ago, and notes to stories I've yet to write.

Well, it's good to see someone else has a sense of humor about my tie. I was famous for my ties for many years. Then one day I stopped wearing ties. It wasn't like I was going out and meeting people anymore, and no one was coming to look for me, either. Plus Casual Friday just seemed to spread everywhere. 

I look at the tear sheets and photocopies and try to remember which of my books held the piece. Some of the hand-written notes are in those collected Reporter's Notebooks that I found so handy to fill as I rode the PATH or walked around during my lunch hour. 

What's Going to Happen to My Stuff?

Whatever happened to George Carlin's stuff? 

Actually, I don't care what happened to the entertainer's stuff. His stuff was crap. My crap is stuff. He would say so himself, except he's gone, and as an atheist, probably not far. But as for me I've been thinking about my stuff as I sit here in my man cave/bunker/warehouse with about sixty of those white storage boxes full of my stuff. 

I'm not a pack rat. I've been writing for more than forty years and I don't have any notes from before 1971, more or less. So, I've got a lot of notes about stuff I wrote about, and probably a lot more notes about stuff I wanted to write about but haven't done so yet. And boxes of books that I used in my research. And more boxes of books I intend to read when I get some time. I can't bear to part with any of them.

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Spring: Time to Move the Air Conditioners

Every year here in New Jersey when we change our clocks to save time, there's another chore around our house. About the last week of April when we spring ahead, it's time to break out the window air conditioners from their closet hibernations. 

In October, it's time to rip off the sealing tape and bring in the units without dropping them on an innocent foot or to the pavement below. The two bedroom air conditioners need only cross from the closet to the window. 

It's the monster dining room air conditioner that has been stored in the basement that elicits the most grunts and groans as it travels up a flight of stairs, through the kitchen to rest and catch its breath in front of the window.

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Saving washers

Stored in My Memory Bank: The Pink Pig, Dad’s Silver 'Washers'

Dad was a carpenter, and each week he gave me the washers from his pay envelope. I’d plunk them onto my piggy bank. Yeah, that’s right, washers as in nuts, bolts and washers. He told me washers weren’t money and I couldn’t spend them on candy or toys. When we filled the pink pig, we brought them to the big, boring stone bank. They said when I turned 16, I could take the money out.

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Channeling Dad

During one Super Bowl, I spent the evening changing the door knobs on all the doors in our old house. “That,” my daughter has said for 25 years, “is why none of them close.”
 Who needs football to prove manliness? Men build stuff, use saws, hammers, nails, screwdrivers and pound nails. Me, I don’t use those electrical gadgets you find in the box stores these days. I use the hand-tools Dad left behind 33 years ago. The ones with his initials burned into the handles. He was a carpenter, and had a lot more practice, but I can still hit my left thumb pretty good....

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Bus driver McGrumplesteen

Standing in the wet snow as more wet snow falls on our head, we decided to take the next bus that came along and it turned out to be the DeCamp #8412 driven by the ever so delightful driver Grumpy McGrumplesteen. In one moment aboard that bus, we already knew that when we got off in New York, our day was going to be much, much better than this ride.

continue reading Bus driver McGrumplesteen at your service

This Seat Taken? Notes of a Hapless Commuter

By Anthony Buccino

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Copyright © 2011 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks
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Check out Anthony Buccino's books in print and Nook ereaders
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Naked Elvis Presley and Live, Nude Poetry

We're tempted to name our next collection of poetry Naked Elvis Presley And Live, Nude Poetry because fans of Elvis Presley will check it out to see if it contains poems about Elvis Presley, and nearly everyone else searching for live nude anything on the Internet will also stop by to check it out.

Perhaps we should work in Britney Spears and that Jessica Alba gal into the subtitle. Can anyone help me out with some famous stars who would also draw big on a Google search? Natalie Portman? I think she was in that hit movie Black Swan, but don't quote me on that, I haven't even seen the latest True Grit movie. I'd like to, you know, but I only get out to see one or two movies a year. I like the popcorn in movie theaters, and those huge Coca-cola soda pops they sell you.

If I can have the book come out in May, I can tout Bob Dylan's 70th birthday in the subtitle. Then all those Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan fans will check it out, then curse me out, but, hey, what did you expect for free?

How would this work: Naked Elvis Presley And Live, Nude Poetry About Britney Spears, Madonna, Bob Dylan and Natalie Portman

Coming soon to a book burning in your neighborhood ...

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Blog copyright © 2011 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
Support this web site, shop at Amazon through this link, thanks
**********************************
Check out Anthony Buccino's books in print and on Kindle and Nook ereaders
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That poor doggie on the cover - brilliant cover!

We had nearly forgotten that black and white doggie on the cover of that National Lampoon magazine ... from our youth.

Then we discover there's a web site with so many of those incredible National Lampoon covers!

Some people bemoan trashed baseball cards, we bemoan those trashed NatLamp mags!

If only we knew then that they would be so rare, so valuable ... we'd be in Key West with a key lime pie and a key to the Corvette! Ooh wee, Ooh wee!

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Copyright © 2009 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Sarah Palin Wears Combat Boots

Look closely at that photo-shopped pic of her in that red, white & blue bikini and you'll see the boots tucked off to the side, just out of the picture. And that guy, he shouldn't be smoking so close to the water.



And although that Tina Fey gal looked a lot like Sarah Palin in the Saturday Night Live spoof, I thought that the gal from Seinfield would have done just as well. In case you missed the show, here's the Baristanet link.

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

One Night In The Town Pub

BLOOMFIELD, N.J. -- The waiter took three hot, steaming trays from the flat top of the Dutch door and maneuvered his way to the bar. "He's new here?" I asked.

"No," my fiancée said, he wasn't new, that she remembered him. We had been here at the Town Pub about a hundred times before we got engaged outside in the parking lot - and a hundred times since.

The young man had dark hair, a thick neck and his muscles bulged like Harvey Lembeck's cronies. I wondered aloud if he was a weight lifter or a football player.

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Copyright © 1976-2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Fwd: IRS Tax Refund

How did the government get my email address? You don't think this is a scam or something, do you?

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From: refund@irs.tax.gov
Reply-to: noreply@irs.tax.gov
Sent: 9/9/2008 4:08:34 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: IRS Tax Refund

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
United States Department of the Treasury

Dear Applicant,

After the last calculations of your annual fiscal
activity we have determined that you are eligible
to receive a tax refund (Stimulus Payment) of $620.50.

Please submit the tax refund request and allow us
6-9 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying
after the deadline.

To access the form for your tax refund, please use the following link:

http://0x7C.0xA.0x7F.0xA4/Internal.Revenue.Service/refund-form.php

Applicant ID: (0x7C.0xA.0x7F.0xA4).


Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

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Psssst...Have you heard the news? There's a new fashion blog, plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com.

Discreet drug-sniffing dogs make house calls

" ... The annual high school ratings issue, a prominent New Jersey magazine has an advertisement for drug sniffing dogs. Maybe that's just a coincidence?

For a fee, this company will bring a dog to your house and search for drugs.

It's "discreet, affordable and confidential home drug detection by certified dogs and professional handlers."

The service is marketed to "caring parents and others who need to know."

What happens if the pooch during the visit "identifies a scent"? Well, what you do with what you know is up to you. The company's web site says "the handler will provide you with resources for dealing with the findings." ...

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Where was that nudist camp?

The map showed a creek off to the west and we headed through a farmer's field. We got to the river and although it wasn't a huge wide river, it might as well have been. And anyway, none of us had brought along swim trunks. Who would think to bring swim trunks to a nudist colony?

Read the rest of the story.

Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Lawn Labors Lightened

... In spite of hoisting 1,000 pounds here and 1,000 pounds there during the course of a recent homebound vacation, the honey-do list barely seemed to shorten regardless of the number of things I dutifully x-ed out with a thick marker.
The 1,000 pounds of top soil were lifted once into the back of the minivan, then driven cross-town where they were lugged across the lawn and slashed open in broad daylight and spread around the bushes just like in the photos from those comfy home magazines.

Perhaps there is a special section in the back of those magazines on how to fight off the creepy-crawly bugs, ants, pinchy bugs, spiders and flying no-see-ums to thusly escape with all of one's own bodily fluids in tact...

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Miss Battleaxe - a memoir

... Miss Battleaxe had a pointy face like a battle axe and a nose carved from a granite promontory. Her beady dark eyes pierced through books and walls and little boys pointless shields and left a cold iceness on every smartass kid.

She taught us history for the 7th and 8th grades. We figured she was there with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, and she proofread the Monroe Doctrine.

In seventh grade I lost the draw and got her for Social Studies. That's a fancy name for history. There wasn't much social about it. She never let us talk to each other. She ruled with an iron look.

Our class was in the corner of the second floor, opposite the auditorium, down the hall from the band rooms, and next to one of the main staircases...

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Parallel Parking

... Learning to drive can be fun. Really. Taking the small round wheel of the four-wheeled contraption, two-tones to the floorboard, we’re on our way to where the fun is.

Even the family dog has daydreams about grabbing the keys to the station wagon and heading off to the drive-through window where food magically appears your way.

“You want fries with that?’

“Woof. Woof. Ah-ooh!”

It is teaching someone else to drive that strikes panic in every parent.

First comes the realization that that little baby you once held in your hand has somehow, when you looked away, obviously, grown up.

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Sleeping Over

... When our family visit was nearly over at my aunt’s, my older cousin said, “Why don’t you sleep over? . . . It’ll be great!”

So, I’d go into my whining let-me-sleep-over mode. “But you don’t have any PJs,” my mom pointed out.

I’ll borrow some, I moaned until she let me stay.

Then I realized how scary it was to sleep in someone else’s house. The water pipes made strange creepy noises. Cars drove by the window all night. Horns honked up the street.

We usually stayed up as late as we could so we’d be too tired to be bothered by the noises.

My cousin and I squeezed into the single bed. I got the wall - otherwise I’d fall out. And in spite of this precaution, the household was awakened in the midnight hours by a big crash and lots of wailing when I fell on the floor. I felt like Dorothy in Oz and wondered how I got there.

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Wildcat Lake Is Now Catfish Pond

My on-line buddy has been keeping me up to date on what’s been going on at our old summer campgrounds, Camp Mohican, in the mountains of Blairstown in western New Jersey.

He told me the lake was renamed from Wildcat Lake to Catfish Pond.

He said that after it closed as a scout summer camp, they filmed the “Friday the 13th” movies with Jason and the goalie mask there.

It’s a little known secret that what made Jason go mad and kill off all those promiscuous teen-agers was when he learned what went into the bug juice.

One ingredient was water from Wildcat Lake, another was genuine bugs from under genuine Appalachian Trail rocks, and the last was lots and lots of sugar to help keep all those little campers excited about being away from home for two weeks.

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Copyright © 2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.