Frank’s father told him get a job or get out.
While Frank’s mother would never have allowed her husband to kick Frank
out, Frank got scared enough to seek one out.
He had just graduated high school and needed spending money in order to
keep up his weekend trips to the village. So, when he saw the ad for a job at
The Little Falls Laundry, he went to apply, dragging me along with him for
moral support.
Frank got the job loading trucks with packages of laundry to be
delivered to various businesses and people.
It was Frank’s job to take boxes that shot down the various shoots and
stack them in the appropriate trucks as part of prearranged routes. During the
most hectic moments, the job involved a non-stop jog from shoot to shoot and
truck to truck and to make sure that none of the shoots backed up all the way
to the tops and the windows through which the workers in the laundry itself
shoved them.
For the first few days, Frank worked alone, while could goof off during
slack periods, the rush was driving him crazy. He unwound during the slack
periods by doing what he called “The Spiderman.”
This meant he would climb the beams that supported the shoots and hang
there like a monkey or conduct any number of aerobatic routines.
He was hanging upside down when the boss came into the delivery area,
leading a new employee, Jimmy.
“Glad to meet you,” Frank said, his upside-down face nose to nose with
Jimmy’s, greeting the man that would change all of our lives in a fashion that
became a bit of Garleyville lore.
Over the next six months those two would treat the warehouse as a kind
of performance space where they would sing and dancing during the slack times,
often pulling pranks on the boss. Jimmy liked taunting the boss, who was a good-natured
guy, and so put up with the taunting much in the way the fictional manager of
the Beatles did in Hard Day’s Night.
Jimmy not only looked a little like John Lennon, but acted a lot like
him, too.
Jimmy would have Frank go across the street to get coffee, cake for
their boss’ breakfast, and then help him eat it, while helping him work out the
crossword puzzle from The Times.
Since Frank was a fan of Broadway musicals, he encouraged Jimmy to make
up imaginary musical plays, a kind of perverted Hair or Godspell, Jimmy taking
the lead in creating such classics as
“In the bathroom with the guys, telling all their duty lies,” or a play Frank claimed would be a master
piece and whose name I can not recall, but remember some of the lyrics which
seemed to defy the previous generation’s efforts in the great war and completely
political incorrect.
“See the red sun rise in the west/the Jap zeros coming in with their
best/ and we’ll all be dead by 11 o’clock/ Peral Harbor’s gonna get it
tonight.”
What the boss thought of all this, I never heard, only I knew that
under all his gruff exterior he seemed to care for both of them – especially
Jimmy – a great deal, and was sorry to see Jimmy leave when Jimmy went off the
art school in Manhattan with his friend, Richard Haas.
Way too smart for his own good, Jimmy had been asked to leave his
father’s high school – a catholic school – because had questioned some articles
of faith. Some teachers may have actually believed Jimmy in league with the
devil.
This expulsion forced him to graduate at Passaic Valley, where he
managed to gather a healthy group of followers, who more or less became his
friends for the rest of his life, and part of that entourage Frank labelled
“The Garley Gang.”
This included Alf, Bob Warren, Tom, Charlie, Jeff Black, Nick Romeo
(whose basement they played music in since Nick was rich and owned everything
they needed), Alfano, and even John Monett.
The one exception to this was Garrick, who Jimmy knew growing up, his
oldest friend and the one who he would continue to be a friend for the rest of
their lives.
They knew each other from Paterson and from Catholic School. They both
briefly attended St. Brendans, for Kindergarten, a year or so before I started
there. Jimmy mother was actually involved with some of the social events at the
school. The family was living on Getty Avenue at the time, one of those brief
sojourns away from Jimmy’s father’s in-laws in West Paterson.
Garrick complained later about Jimmy constantly pulling stuff on him,
taking credit for various projects, and once even borrowed his radio only to
return it broken.
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