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.

An easy date to remember

Letter of introduction

... She was taller than me then. Her presence in my French class always made my day. Her hair was dark and very long, and sometimes it tangled in front of her face and she had to brush it away. She dressed conservatively with long skirts and baggy pants. Never glamorous, pretty much the way you’d want your sister to dress. She was bright, being a friend of mine for a time notwithstanding. Yes, and she wore braces when I knew her.

I took her to see the double feature at the Royal, or maybe it was the Center, in Bloomfield Center. Then, afterwards, we went to IHOP for a bite. We met another kid I knew (not too well, actually); he asked me if she was my sister. Fortunately, I don’t remember if I said anything witty, I doubt it.



I decided to make a habit about reading movie reviews before I took dates to them. One movie we saw that night had Marlo Thomas as an unwed mother. She talked about taking the pill, and never making love because no one might ever ask her, or not taking the pill and getting pregnant. At the end of the movie, she breast-fed the baby. It was some first date. I squirmed in my seat, and even now, I can remember how sweaty my palms were when that movie ended.

The other movie was about a cowboy named Zachariah, and it was biblically significant. All that went right over my Catholic head.

At IHOP, my date had a strawberry shake and told me there were real strawberries in it. I didn’t have anything witty to say. I called my mom to come pick us up. We brought her home. Every time I called to talk to her, her mom said she was out with Jeff.

I stopped bothering her April 14, that year. It was an easy date to remember. That was when Lincoln was shot and when the Titanic sank.

Talk about irony, didn’t know anything about her, really. I learned later her father was a minister, so she probably understood all that Bible stuff in the movie. And later, I learned that Jeff was her brother.

In my yearbook, the next year, she wrote, “It was nice.” I saw her once since then, at a funeral, but I couldn’t say to her what was racing around in my mind. But like I say, she wasn’t there, at the reunion. Her brother was. He was bald, and he sang a solo. She still adds music to my words but it’s a soft tune...

A Father's Place, an eclectic collection
by Anthony Buccino

**********************************

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

How Many Hammers Is Enough?

Strange, it is, to sense the memories that suddenly swim to the surface like the picture in my head of my father as the ragtag kid who swam from the bottom of the Passaic River with a handful of mud, "See, wise guys? I really did swim to the bottom!"

Dad was a good swimmer, a very strong swimmer. It's not an inherited skill. It wasn't until my late teens that I knowingly approached water that was deeper than my Adam's Apple. Swimming is something a dad should teach his son before the boat starts to leak.

Building things was Dad's claim to fame. He never took complete credit for a building or a house, but he earned his pride in a job well done. His pride was of a true craftsman who looked back every time and said, "I built it with my own hands and tools. No one could have done it better." ...

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Copyright © 1983-2008 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

A FATHER'S PLACE

"I wasn't more than five years old the night my father grabbed me with his vise-like hands on his jackhammer arms and swung me over the banister of our second story back porch.

Swinging me side to side 20 feet in the air above the concrete sidewalk, Dad and I were having fun. I was safe, safe from the world in his strong hands. Mother's screams of terror stilled my shrieks of joy.

That night, Dad and I bonded, though neither of us knew the lexicon. The image of that night dangles daily in the bittersweet memories my father left me. ..."

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Copyright © 1990-2008 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.

Ear-Splittin' Louden-Boomer

My neighbor Jerry was always one to take things apart to see how they tick. He liked to play his Grand Funk Railroad at Ear-Splittin Louden-Boomer until the speakers exploded. Then he'd take apart his woofers and tweeters and make them as good as new.

He was the same way with his electric guitar and amp. You could hear him halfway up the block on Carpenter Street.

He had one of those gas-powered airplanes. It made a lot of noise when the engine was running. It sounded like a wild lawn mower. But I don't remember him ever getting the plane to fly. And even if he did, it would surely have crashed in to one of the gazillion trees on our property.

Did I mention Jerry got me to join the Boy Scouts? Then he got too sick to ever go on any of the camping trips. We tried to send each other Morse Code signals bedroom-to-bedroom with a flashlight. I never could get the difference between a long and a short flash, so, to tell him I was finished, I put the light on my chin and looked like Herman Munster.

No wonder he became a computer program ... when the first PCs came out ... and later made a career - from which he retired - out of keeping a New York bank's computers humming.

He was also a cable TV installer. That was when it was all brand new. He was the first person I ever heard of to have a carpal tunnel operation.

When you looked at the scars from that operation, you'd think he tried to kill himself.

He was the first kid in the neighborhood to play the Woodstock album - and the Fish Cheer really, really loud. It was like we were getting away with something.

Anyway, Jerry always came down from Pennsylvania for my book signings. Once he came down and had to rush back because it was his daughter's prom and he had to take her pictures when she was all dolled up.

Nobody was surprised when he told us that his daughter was an honest-to-God rocket scientist.

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

Greenie Stick 'em Caps

Believe it or not, we were trying to remember the theme song to Car 54, Where Are You? That comedy TV show from the early 1960s. Turns out, it only has one verse.

I still have the Dick Tracy .38 snubnose revolver cap gun that shot caps and little plastic bullets. It's somewhere in my attic.

And, that reminded me of when my pal Gary and I used to shoot our cap guns. Gary favored Greenie Stick 'em Caps. These caps stuck to the toy bullet and after they exploded you had to peel them off.

I loved the boxes of red-roll caps. You put the roll in the gun and shot off your caps until your fingers went numb.

When we got bored shooting one or two caps off with our toy guns, we would slam a brick on a box and watch it explode.

Those were the 60s. That's how we had fun. That and dirt bombs. We were to fat, dumb and happy to worry about the A-bomb.

Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water

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

PS - You should have believed Margo when she said Tonoose would end up blogging about the lyrics to Car 54, Where Are You?

Links Subject to Change

MARRIED TO A CHRISTMAS NUT

At the end of November, my plain, normal, ordinary English teaching wife went mad.

She whistled tunes about a fat guy, deer that stand in the rain and told me not to be naughty because I was being watched.

She cluttered the breakfast table with holly until I could not find my cereal bowl.

Eggnog filled each and every shelf in the refrigerator and all my root beer had been banished to the pantry. I awakened to smell the chestnuts.

It was too late to change her or find a cure, I married a Christmas Nut!

Continue reading Married to a Christmas Nut

... for a limited time

Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Camp Mohican and 'Bug Juice'

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.

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Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

STRANGERS IN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS

Who are these people in these old photos?

The squares look like poster stills from some old WWII movie.

They are black and white, somewhat out of focus, yet, these people do seem to be enjoying the moment.

It is obvious they enjoy the moment of togetherness that is frozen in time before me on such brittle and fragile paper.

These long-ago relatives gathered at a wedding here, a baptism there, a picnic there.

They hammed it up with a smile, or stood prim and proper in a nearly formal pose for all posterity.
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Copyright © 2007 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

BELL THE CAT

The first time I met John I delivered a big roundhouse punch into his belly. He never knew it was coming.

He had just transferred into our Nutley catholic elementary school that morning. Sister Genevieve had introduced him to the class.

At ten o'clock recess, outside in the playground next to where we could look down into the cafeteria kitchen window and watch the old fat ladies with silver hair in buns getting lunch ready for the kids who got to stay for lunch, where we could smell the smells of cooking vegetables and meatloaf and whatever kids who ate in school ate:

POW! Welcome to the second grade, kid.
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Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

PF FLIERS, PORTABLE TYPEWRITERS ...

One of the first things to catch my eye when I opened the Vermont Country Store catalog was the Simple-to-Use Smith Corona Electronic Typewriter, Efficiency Without High-Tech Headaches.

Now there’s a headline to get you out of the 21st Century and back into the good old days.

No wonder. The Electronic Typewriter is being sold by a Rutland, Vt.-based company that sells things we remember from the good old post-WWII growing up days.

Think Lifeboy or Sweet Heart soap, or PF Fliers- the high tops! Ipana toothpaste (as if your spell check would have a clue if Ipana was spelled right!) Adams brand Black Jack and sour apple gums.

My first typewriter was a portable Smith-Corona. My second typewriter was an electric Smith-Corona. There wasn’t really a lot of difference between the two, besides the obvious electric plug. The keys and characters were all about the same.

The manual typewriter used man finger power to move the bars and levers to make an impression through a ribbon of ink. The electric used electricity to power the levers. Instead of a return bar the electric had a button you pushed.

The manual typewriter had a hard case, made of steel or kryptonite. You could stand on the case – with or without the typewriter in it – and reach things on the top shelf. The electric typewriter had a vinyl cover with a zipper.

Next to my Datsun B210, my Smith-Corona electric typewriter was the most powerful tool I owned in the 1970s. In fact, I still have it.

But I digress from the Vermont Country Store catalog.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

BROOKDALE SODA - LETTERS, WE GET LETTERS

I was looking for Brookdale Beverage stuff and your sight came up.

My father was the plant manager for Brookdale for as long as I can remember.

My brothers & sisters used to run around the plant while my father waited for his last driver(s) to come back to the plant.

Brookdale was part of so many families back then.

He was with them until shortly before they folded, he passed away.

If you know of anyone with Brookdale stuff for sale please E mail me
-- Diane

We got Diane's letter earlier this year.
It's been almost 30 years since we wrote Memories of Brookdale Soda. Who knew way back in July 1976 that those were just the beginning of memories of this and that?

Last August, early in our blog career, we posted Brookdale Soda - The Saga Continues as a continuation/update of what's been happening since the soda story came up on the Internet.

BROOKDALE SODA

Who could wait to drive
the family sedan or wagon
To the Brookdale soda depot
on 6th Street or Sylvan?
Empty cases in the trunk
Scooting through tree-lined streets
To the back yard driveway off
Sylvan Avenue in Bloomfield
or the Allwood Circle cross town
Or off to downtown at Heller/Heller
Grab a hand cart and an empty case
Splintering wood and later dark-blue plastic –
Go through the stacks of cases and fill them:

Birch beer – two or three, Kola, cream,
ginger ale, Cheers – don’t forget quinine too
Blood red cherry and cherry-pit, another birch
and fill it out with root beer, more Kola, too
and orange soda, cream, and bright green lemon-lime
Life never got any better than this,
and we wouldn’t know that for a long while

VISIT OUR BROOKDALE SODA BLOG

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

FIRST DATE

If providence has anything to do with it, you might try to arrange for your first date with someone to be on your mother's birthday.

That way, if that first date gets serious and years later you need to remember the anniversary of your first date - it's your mom's birthday.

How simple is that?

On this date in 1973, I spent the day, a Friday, driving a Maxwell House coffee van around Manhattan - oddly enough, in search of C. W. Post College (General Foods made both Maxwell House coffee and Post cereals) - and had my first accident in a commercial vehicle.

I was driving along lost in the big city when I decided to move from the right center lane to the right curb lane. And when I did, I ignored the horns of the city - the city is full of honking horns - and pulled over and into a livery cab.

So, you could see I really wanted to get home to New Jersey and go out on a date.

We planned to see a Laurel & Hardy movie at the Park Theater on Bloomfield Avenue in Caldwell.

When I arrived at the gal's house I told her mother about the truck accident and it being my mother's birthday.

The gal's mother thought I might be kidding about the accident, or the birthday, or both. She didn't know me very well.

The gal seemed to think I was full of surprises.

Apparently when I'm telling a true story, sometimes people think it's my imagination going on. And when I tell a story-story, they don't know what to think.

So we went on the date and saw the movie. And that led to another date and another and I can still remember our first date.

When I reminded my wife of our anniversary, she asked me how many years.

And when I said 33, I think I surprised her. Yeah, after all these years.

Heck, it's been 23 years since I left General Foods. Talk about surprises. It's a writer's life for me.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

Rain's a Coming (Wed. PM Commute III )

This September night looks like Ophelia headed our way and the sky is dark and menacing.

Finally the bus pulls up. It’s been here but only now put its lights on so we’d know if it’s the one we’re waiting for. The other busses sit with their lights out, the drivers on break. I suppose the riders need a union too?

There’s a good crowd but plenty of seats. I sit sideways in the old people seats behind the driver.

He weaves the giant bus off 5th Street through cars parked on both sides on Anthony Street to the light at Sixth Street.

Off to the left, you can’t see it now because it’s long gone, but once, before these senior skyscrapers came along, right over there, next to where the gas station is, that’s where the pony rides were located when I was a kid.

Did I tell you I was the fastest draw in the wild west city of Belleville, N.J., in 1961? That’s when Marty Robbins wrote and released El Paso. Oh. I did tell you. Wait until you get old and start to repeat yourself!

DRAW!

At the stop across the street from Clara Maass Medical Center, on gets Bam-Bam, a regular who hops this bus to Centre Street in Nutley to catch the 13 to Belleville which is where we are now. It’s a perfect example of “you can’t get there from here.”

The metal tip of Bam-Bam’s cane is bursting through the plastic cap. I don’t know his name, but when he talks to the bus driver, he ends his sentences with Bam-Bam. There are a lot of regulars on this bus, and except for Jimmy the magician, I don’t know their names, and that includes the few I have conversations with.

Bam-Bam looks like the actors Herb Edelman and Herschel Bernardi. He talks loud and clear and doesn’t care who hears what he has to say.

I got up from the senior seat for him and took a seat further back as Bam-Bam climbed aboard. Ahead of him a guy who seemed okay gets on and takes the seat I left.

Someone else got up from the opposite senior sideways seats and Bam-Bam plopped down, looping his cane in the hand-hold bar.

Bam-Bam thanked the guy who got up. I nodded as if to say ‘don’t mention it.’ But I don’t think he ever saw me either get up to give him my seat or nod back to say not to mention it.

My first wife calls that putting bricks in your house in heaven. All I did was give the guy a seat.

The 6:53 No. 74 Bus to Paterson is flying me home in the early dark of the night. I’m wondering if I’ll beat the rain. I know my umbrella will stay dry – it’s hanging on a doorknob in the basement.

In the silhouette of the night the few remaining buildings are backlit by the fading light as they wonder will they too be part of the Essex Park housing development or turned into rubble before the leaves change colors.

I turn off El Paso and pack up the Walkman.

Against the odds I sat safe and dry in my little red wagon. Before I could pull away from the curb the sky opened up. Driving home was not unlike a long ride through a car wash tunnel.

Copyright © 2005 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission. Updated May 2008

Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs

Twin-Music Lyrics - El Paso

Bob Dylan - Desire

Romance In Durango

Walkman

Herb Edelman

Herschel Bernardi