Long story to a short line:         

My Mom told the story that I wanted to go to school so bad that she found a kindergarten class at a public school a few blocks from our apartment in Hoboken. The Catholic School, Our Lady of Garce did not offer anything but grades 1-8. The kindergarten class was in Demarest School, which years later would host dances that required a “couple” to enter, but that’s another story. I have three distinct memories of that kindergarten class.

1. There was a coveted “peg table” that was very popular. We lined up at the classroom door and when it opened everyone rushed to their favorite toy or thing. I ran for the peg table, you could sit down at it and (yes, you guessed it) put pegs in holes. Hey, its’s fucking kindergarten! Well, this one day I must have accidentally pushed a girl and it must have been winter and the steam radiators were at full heat, and she fell into one and burned her arm. The good news is it was Hoboken it was 1954 and there were no lawyers around. Her very angry father did show up at my apartment and yelled up the 22 stairs at my Mom pointing at the burn on his daughter’s arm. “See what your son did to my daughter?” My mother handled it well.
2.  There was a girl with red hair who always wore a yellow dress with those stupid black and white shoes. I loved her. I would try to sit next to her when we had sitting events. Once, during our milk break she got up to get her little container of Whole Milk first and I bent down and smelled the bench where her ass had just sat. It smelled like slightly wet wood.
3.  The last day of kindergarten we were given a folder of all our drawings and “stuff” to take home. On the way home, I remember running into some “big kids” and my folder got smaller and not so neat. I remember my Mom consoling me. It might be the beginning of  “Zorro”. Timing is right – 1954.

First Grade and Mrs. Caldron and I’m finally in Our Lady of Grace being regularly beat up by Sisters of Charity. I am the boy who is assigned to deliver the little milk containers to each classroom. Why am I assigned to do this? Because it keeps me busy and otherwise out of the nuns’ non-existent hair. At the end of the day, I gather all the erasers and take them outside to shake the chalk out of them (this entails slapping them along the side of the school building). I didn’t know why I was given all these jobs until years later when I read about ADHD and realized if I was born 20 years later I’d have been lined up outside the nurses office to get my “calm him down” shot. I was so lucky.

Here’s the thing: all during my 8 years of OLG, just about EVERY report card had on the back a check in the “Unsatisfactory” or “Improvement Needed” boxes next to Emotional Stability. “What does emotional stability mean?” I’d ask my mom never missing the opportunity to ask a question. She didn’t know and so she’d say something like “you get angry sometimes”. I didn’t think I got angry EVER.

To bring this story to an end, the other day I was posed with the question:

In three words what you will have on your tombstone, and I proudly replied:

Remains Emotionally Unstable   

Welcome back.            

The new look is a bit more organized and reflects the basement coming together into alphabetized areas. Not my ideal plan, but a good start and at conclusion, at least I’ll know where everything is.

The Blog area is more linear and will allow scrolling into past entries which I like. Will there be more changes?

You bet. In the meantime…..

I’ve been playing on Twitter the last year. Yes, Elon has re-named Twitter “X”, which I like but saying “I’m on X” just doesn’t convey the same information.

I’ve also changed my diet and joined a “Keto/Carnivore” Twitter Community of like-minded people who try to support each other’s journey to good health. But that’s another blog entry.

My Twitter handle is DonDiegoVega69 – an ID I used to play Online Poker during the Pandemic. Come visit

For today I thought I’d post what I think are my 20 best Twitts over the past year. Here they are:

I have always tried to live my life based of the results of MY thinking not other people’s thinking. I have rarely succeeded. But those times …when I did – they were the best of times.

Black Privilege: Chirlane McCray, the wife of former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, was awarded $900 million to launch a mental health project aimed at assisting the city’s homeless. The Daily Mail reported that she “lost” $850 million of the $900.

My Dad never met the “People on the internet”. But he was always prepared with one of his standard remarks: “Hey, Buddy, if shit were electricity, you’d be a walking powerhouse.” We are what we eat. Ignore the donuts you meet in life.

Let’s not forget the best George Costanza line: “It’s not a lie if you believe it”.

Grew up with Hellmann’s Mayo. Worked for the Hellmann’s Company for 32 years. LOVED Hellmann’s Mayo. Unilever now owns Hellmann’s and swapped out capers for sugar in the recipe. I now buy and enjoy Duke’s Mayo. Sad to lose an old friend.

I know this sounds biased but, Valerie, I’ve found Canadians are best avoided. They put gravy on French Fries!! These are confused and troubled people.

From a very young age, my son always referred to God as “she”. My lovely wife and I took the position that he might know something we didn’t and never corrected him. He’s 33 and a fine young man.

It doesn’t happen often anymore. But every now and then, I’ll walk into someone’s house and the smell of cigarettes will bowl me over. I’ll stop and smile and close my eyes and say: “I’m home”.

What you think, happens. Simple Easy to explain Hard to accept.

Proud to have been fired by Unilever in 2003 for excessive unprocessed sarcasm.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

So, I “retired” from a huge corporation, always lots of political in-fighting going on, 32 years of it. I decided to volunteer at a local senior center. There were THREE paid people in charge. It took me two days to realize two of the three hated each other. People mostly suck.

My son asked, “Why are you so sure the bank will give me the loan?” I replied, “because you don’t NEED the money.” Lesson learned.

Let’s remember before the United Nations was built, the land it sits on was mostly slaughterhouses and the original Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory. I can understand a bunch of pencil-necked bureaucrats sloshing thru offal on their way to save the planet for the poor and wretched.

The last time Greta Thunberg visited Ukraine their Secret Service is rumored to have swapped her birth control for Pez. I’ve been patiently waiting for the Immaculate Conception story ever since.

So, if Trump is elected, he’ll basically, do everything the Brain was going to do but without Pinky, right?

It is part of the ugly reality of living in a free society: Every day we must deal with people we would rather throttle to within an inch of their worthless lives, but instead we tip our hats and say: “have a nice day”.

Before he was Morpheus, Laurence Fishburne was Cowboy Curtis on PeeWee’s Playhouse.

When the future love of his life (for 8 hours at least) walked by Jack Dawson on the deck of the Titanic, what was he doing? Smoking, of course.

I used to have a “holier than thou” attitude but I lost it in a terrible (but beautiful) thunderstorm outside Flagstaff, AZ in the late 60’s. Shortly after, I picked up a poor attitude at a tourist shop in Bakersfield. I’ve been using that quite happily ever since. jus sayin

The Snow Job                     

I’d always call my Dad before a snowstorm and remind him to park his car at the top of the driveway. This way he only had to dig out the few feet of snow between street and driveway. One storm, he forgot.  Of course, THAT storm was a 10 incher and it was with some trepidation I loaded my trunk with 2 shovels and gloves and water, got my son next to me and drove off to “the job”. I took my obligations to “raise a good child” seriously and saw the learning opportunity the impending shoveling event would present.

The roads were clear and we took the 22 minute ride to Park Ridge easily. I parked before the driveway and we both got out and surveyed the job. It was about 100 feet of gravel driveway and WaAAyY down there at the end was my Dad’s Ford covered in snow. I said, “that’s the big job, let’s do a little job, first”. And we both shoveled the 25 feet to the front door. My Dad was waiting, and we sat in the kitchen and talked snow for a while. He smoked, I might have (I forget if I was or wasn’t at the time).

Eventually, we left and presenting ourselves at the head of the driveway, I said to my son, “Times like this, or I should say JOBS like this are best approached by NOT looking at the destination, but looking at the snow in front of you and moving THAT snow out of the way, got it?” We cleared a spot at the top of the driveway about a car’s length. Then we shoveled foot wide “tire track” paths down to Dad’s car (only expending energy as necessary). We cleared off the car and I drove it up to the top area and we were done. The car reeked of cigarettes and stale smoke and had a huge burn hole in the driver’s seat. No, I didn’t say a thing.

That was the only time I ever asked my son for help shoveling. I always considered it my job. Maybe it was residual memories of being sent off to work at the Supermarket with a wagon that caused me to never force my son to do anything work related. I took some heat for it. Especially during summers when the notion of “summer job” would come up. My approach was always: “he has the rest of his life to work, let him play as long as he can”. I am pleased to say, my son works well and plays equally well and I am therefore vindicated (he says clicking his pen and looking oddly crazed).   

Doc           

He was born in the Roaring 20’s, 6 years before the Depression and right in the middle of Prohibition. He knew nothing of those events, he was a kid growing up on the streets of Union City and Hoboken, New Jersey. He was born in his mother’s family home at 1209 Park Avenue, Hoboken and spent most of his young life living there with his aunts and uncles. Not at 311 6^th Street, Union City which was his listed address.

His best friend Pete lived in Hoboken but their adventures spanned Fort Lee to Point Pleasant. “Uncle” Pete talked about he and Tommy spending a whole day in the Meadowlands section of Jersey City gathering a big paper bag filled with frogs, which they proceeded to leave turned over as they exited their Streetcar to the screams of the ladies in the back.

He attended Emerson High School in Union City and although the school did not have a basketball team, his yearbook is peppered with references to his basketball prowess. Reading that same 1941 Emerson High Yearbook, he is viewed as a “swell guy” by more than one gal and guy. His nickname was “Doc” implying a thoughtful character. The picture is of him on the left, his best friend Pete was always a larger-than-life presence, with Joe-Mac and Angelo. He had already perfected the Robert DeNiro look before Robert DeNiro perfected it.

He enrolled in Lehigh University and played several games on the Freshman Basketball Team before being drafted into the US Army. Before leaving for Europe, he married his sweetheart, Edith. Wounded during the Battle of the Bulge, he came home in January 1946 with a 20% disability for which the Government agreed to pay him $23 per month forever. Tom Jr. was born 10 months after his return to Edith, followed by Kevin and Dennis. He never played basketball again. He bought his kids all the stuff, but none of us really liked sports. It was the 50’s and Ed Sullivan and Soupy Sales were on TV. He worked for a meat packing company as a Traffic Manager until they moved to Texas.  Then he took a job selling cars.

I remember my Mom yelling “You’re going to sell cars!” as if it was the most impossible thing in the world. “You won’t talk to ME!” But he sold cars and became the manager of the dealership and he and Mom had quite a few paid trips complements of the Ford Motor Company. He still didn’t talk much. When I asked a personal question he’d say “What are you writing a book?” Maybe I should have said yes. He worked long hours. When Dennis went to school, Mom got a job at the Lipton Tea Company.

Someone bought the apartment house we lived in and wanted the first floor apartment (ours). In 1964, at 41 years of age, he bought a house in Park Ridge, NJ for $25,000. He used the GI Bill and put $25 down. After he bought the house, he took Edith to see it. We were the picture perfect successful American family. Two years later, Tom Jr. was killed in the Vietnam police action. It was the only time I ever saw my father cry. Sobbing is more accurate. He hugged me and sobbed “The bastards killed Thomas.”

On his 60^th birthday, I found my Dad smoking in the living room after dinner and sat and asked, “What’s up” and he replied, “I haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life.” And I said without hesitation, “I’d appreciate you’re saying something like I’m happy and content with my life thus far”. He was silent. So was I.

He got to see my son play baseball and soccer (no, not basketball). Four years after my Mom died, he threw himself an 80^th Birthday Party and invited everyone still alive and it was a great party.  Four years later, he’d had enough and died. There are still a few questions I’d like to ask you. But they can wait.

          Happy Birthday, Dad