We all knew this wouldn’t work, three of us living in the same
apartment in Passaic.
But I couldn’t stand living in the rooming house in Montclair, and with
the purchase of a car – as 1960 Chevy – I realized I didn’t have to live on a
bus line to get to work.
I had been borrowing the company van to get to and from Montclair but
could not use it to travel all the way from Fairfield to Passaic.
The three of us didn’t intend to live together forever. We knew that
the old Polish people who occupied many of the other apartments in the three-building
complex would perish sooner or later and all we had to do was wait.
But living together was a challenge – we might kill each other before
any of the old people died.
Jimmy had left the band – replaced by a guy named Jack, who practiced
down 8th Street in Joe’s bar hall Garrick had hired for them.
Jimmy had gotten a straight job delivering for Outwater Plastics – a company
just up River Drive he could walk to daily – a far cry from the job he had at
Madison’s Book Store in Montclair where he had more or less taken over the
children’s department.
We all assumed Jimmy would get back into the band sooner or later. He
even owned a Rickenbacker guitar – the same year and model the Beatles had used
to record Day Tripper.
Garrick had moved into Passaic first after his breakup with Jeanne in
Little Falls, taking residence in the small apartment next door at 84 Passaic
Street. He was so depressed from shattered romance, he had painted the whole
apartment white, walls, ceiling, even some of the floor. He didn’t want to see
his own reflection, so he painted the mirror over the kitchen sink white, too.
He moved into the larger apartment at 86 Passaic to accommodate Jimmy,
who had lost his job as Madison’s and abandoned his apartment on Pine Street in
Montclair.
Since Jimmy and I had spent so much time together in Montclair, I felt
abandoned and decided to move to Passaic, too, on the promise that the old
Poles would die and we each would inherit one of their apartments.
This temporary arrangement had Garrick living in the living room, Jimmy
in a small bedroom – in which he had had his brother Bob help him build a loft,
with me sleeping on a cot in the kitchen.
It was a recipe for disaster.
Garrick wasn’t over his depression. He was moody and slept a lot, and had
petty disputes with me and Jimmy, which often had each of us ducking into our
little corners for cover. Often, the disputes resulted in temporary alliances,
me and Jimmy against Garrick, me and Garrick against Jimmy, Jimmy and Garrick
against me.
It was a particularly hot July, escalating even petty feuds into
outright warfare.
Garrick had the only room with cross ventilation. So, when he closed
his door to the rest of us, he could still breathe. I had only a window near
the door to the car port and until Jimmy kept his door open or Garrick his, I
got no circulation at all.
Jimmy had one window in his room, and it opened onto an alley. When he
closed his door, he suffocated.
That’s when he decided to sell the guitar and buy an air conditioner.
As with most disputes dealing with band equipment, Garrick claimed it
wasn’t Jimmy guitar to sell.
Worse, Jimmy decided he no longer needed to keep the door to his room
open at all, cutting us off from circulation as well as the cool air.
Garrick and I got so angry we shoved a lighted pack of firecrackers
under his door on one particularly hot day.
That was the end of the affair. Jimmy and Garrick concluded that three people
in one apartment was too much and decided I was the one who had to go.
A short time later, I found an apartment on Paulison Avenue, and received
a settlement from the insurance company from the car accident Frank and I were
involved in in 1972.
I should have bought a better car. I bought Jimmy’s old Gibson guitar,
and electric fender and a Teac tape recorder and set up a recording studio
where Jimmy and I spent the rest of the year getting stoned and writing songs.
When my car crapped out finally, I sold the Teac and the two guitars,
brought a new guitar and moved back to the Montclair rooming house.
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