Mom's House

Mom’s House


She died in October.

At the end of March, I decided I had to do something about the house. After all, she was the one who lived in it, and she wasn’t going to be doing that any more—the last three months had really convinced me, I suppose. She left pretty much everything, except the dress she was wearing.

Of course, I could keep it—the house—sit on it for a spell, procrastinate, as I was pretty much doing. But all kinds of people would consider this wasteful, profligate and zany. Amityville is a small town. Also, they would be right.

They would go out of their way to convince my children to influence me to either live in the house or sell it. My children would feel pressured, for really no particular reason, to have to think about something they needn’t. They would eventually feel they had to confront me about it, maybe debate it, maybe even argue about it, as if it were their concern.

I have long thought about it, though, only when I was tired and didn’t have my guard up. One time I imagined living in it, too, rather than face the unspeakable, inevitable moment of separation from it. I didn’t, of course. Well, maybe not, “of course.” I didn’t, is all. I just procrastinated for all of this winter, adding the cost of six months of deciding this or that, before still eventually doing nothing. I do that well.

Sixty-one-Summers ago.

It was 1949. I was pushing three and a half years with my new partners, Dolores and Eddie Lowe, originally from Brooklyn. “The North Side.” Green Point, Williamsburg.

Legend has it, I talked them into Amityville. I don’t recall. I couldn’t imagine life without it or them, though, so maybe it’s true.

One day I do remember: I was perched atop my father’s shoulders, looking north, my mother at my left—at me and my Dad’s left—holding my father’s left hand, as it came around the back of her shoulder and rested there.

Our car was in the driveway. (Black—my father used to quote Henry Ford, something about cars of every color, as long as it was black. I laughed, hoping he wouldn’t know that I didn’t know what he was talking about: “…any color, as long as it was black.” What could that mean?).

We had been living for a little more than three (and-a-half) years in a studio apartment over my cousin’s three-car garage, which was fine with me—I mean, swimming across the canal, chasing ducks, fishing for snappers, catching crabs—although, a room for me, alone, was tempting.

I imagine they couldn’t believe it; a house with bedroom and a living room, and a separate bedroom for me, and a separate room for the car. (A separate room for the car! We must have won the Irish sweepstakes.).

I’ll admit, I got caught up, too, in the awe and wonder of our owning our own house (I pretty much presumed equal partnership.). I even forgot for a moment that I was leaving Great South Bay.

The bay was merely out of instantaneous view, I concluded, really only a couple of blocks South. There was a canal behind some of houses near, “our,” house. That would do fine. I could throw rocks into the canal.

Mister Lurie (or, maybe, DeLurie), was there, coming out of the house, telling my father when he could count on moving in. Probably, July.

He was a boatbuilder. This was his first house. The land had been supplied by Jack Folks, and the bank took the land as a down payment. Then, Jake Bendersky, a lawyer, did the closing for free, as a gift for the new cop, Eddie Lowe. I didn’t know what a closing was, and I wasn’t invited. I did not know Jack Folks, yet, either. I let my father handle all those financial details. My father didn’t have much money, but he had good friends.

There were something like 205 feet from the front of the property to the back. I forgot that almost immediately. The back yards all blended together.

From the street, there were thick woods to the left of the house, and tall grass and woods to the right, opposite the garage. Another year, Mister Lurie, or, DeLurie, would build the identical house there, to the right, next door, mirror-image, so that the garages would face each other.

I would play in the dirt mounds all that summer.

I lived there 21 years, although, not much of the last four. My father lived there from the age of 33 until he died, at 69, or 36 years, which is a lifetime, unless you dared compare it to my mother’s tenure, which included my father’s 36 years plus 25 more.

She ended it precisely the way she wanted to end it, surrounded by mostly female relatives of my daughters’ generation (there being none left of her own). She reminisced. Talking, telling stories. She talked up to and including a moment where, for only 20 minutes or so, only Colleen was there, holding her hand. Colleen was softly singing, “Show me the way to go home. I’m tired and I want to go to bed / I had a little drink about an ago / and it went right to my head…”

And she died.

She picked a perfect moment, and died.

I’ll have to do something about the house.

Haiti

Andrea Sciberras, 35, is a physician who teaches at The University of Florida at Miami. She was raised in Floral Park and Garden City. She initially wanted to be a writer. This is from her letter. She begins: “Some of this may be too graphic for some of you, so I warn you in advance to read with caution.

“Many of you have been asking about my recent trip to Haiti. Hopefully these reflections will answer most of your questions.

“I recently visited Haiti with an HIV/AIDS foundation that I used to work with in NY. They had (note past tense) 3 HIV clinics—one each in Port-au-Prince, Delmas, and Leogane. All were completely demolished except for partial damage to the clinic in Delmas.

“The first reaction I had when getting off our charter plan was to the stench. No amount of Vicks Vapo-rub inside my TB mask could mask the smell of decay, rotting bodies, Pseudomonas infections, feces and waste, and overall despair and helplessness.

“Most of the volunteer physicians in Haiti currently are staying in town or the airfield in makeshift hospitals. There are not enough doctors out in the communities. Hence, we deployed to the communities. I went to Leogane with a few others.

“Leogane is a city approximately 1 hour from Port-au-Prince which, was affected severely. It took us 5 hours to get there as there are really no roads or direct routes any more. Although we had some military presence with us, they were unable to stop the loose criminals and gangs at makeshift roadblocks, demanding money or valuables.

“Along the way, we experienced the rubble, the people running along side the SUV begging for anything that would help, the falling down of a nation that was already fallen. Most of the bodies have been moved to mass graves, however, occasionally there was a limb or other body part sticking out of the rubble and mess. The worst for me was finding a near-term fetus in an abandoned building, next to a pizza carton.

Along with the people begging for help, we saw groups united in prayer, with hope still brewing among this mass disaster. Tent cities—some with real tents, some; makeshift from sheets—everywhere. Dirt everywhere. Sickness everywhere.

“When we finally got to Leogane, I met up with a contact I had at the Russian Orthodox Church out there, which was demolished (along with several other Russian churches throughout the greater area. As you know, I am Russian Orthodox.) The entire congregation was living in one big tent, which is where we ended up staying since our clinic was completely gone. A woman was just giving birth when we arrived. Normally I would be happy and excited to bring a new child in to the world, but in this case I didn’t know how to feel.

“Our, ‘hosts,’ were very gracious and thankful to have us. Although their community was destroyed, they still had faith. There is hardly any medical help out in the smaller communities, and it almost seems like those people have been forgotten. It was heartbreaking to see a man walking around on an ankle that was bent 90 degrees inward. He was unable to get medical care in the days just after the quake.

“While I was there, I attempted to treat these orthopedic injuries with the little supplies I had. The amount of infections I saw was overwhelming. I had obtained some free antibiotics from Publix—Keflex, amoxicillin, penicillin injections, etc.—but it would have been nice to have some ceftriaxone injections, some, ‘big gun,’ antibiotics.

“It was such a helpless feeling not to be able to have and help more. The tetany was starting to take over. I had never seen someone die of tetany before, and it was heartbreaking. For non-medical folks reading this, tetany is caused by injuries—stepping on a rusty nail—and we urge you to get tetanus shots every 10yrs.Tetany causes severe muscle spasms of the entire body. If not treated, people writhe in pain from the severity of these contractions. They cannot relax, their entire body may arch in spasm, and eventually they die, basically suffocating because their respiratory muscles spasm and paralyze.

“It was a horrible experience to see people go through this. We did not have any tetanus shots or toxoid with us, nor even any medications to help ease their suffering while they died in agony. Again I felt so helpless.

“I watched many others die of overwhelming infections/sepsis—one villager coughed up an entire bucket of blood before passing away.

“In Haiti, even in the makeshift hospitals that I visited, there are/were still no oxygen canisters, no respirators/ventilators, no defibrillators, etc. so “heroic” measures, to me, meant allowing them to pass on in peace. Yet, morphine was in a limited supply. Even Tylenol and Ibuprofen were limited. I brought 50 bottles of each on my own, and the people were ever so grateful, even though I knew 2 Tylenol would not do much to ease their pain. I even had to do a circumcision on a male with gangrene with my own lidocaine—a local injection (sorry guys!)—there are no anesthetics there.

“Amid the hope of many villagers, there also comes a lot of anger. Unfortunately many bad people have resorted to looting, rape, pillage. It was not safe there, especially at night. Haitian women were getting raped. I treated many victims of rape, if they had the courage to come see me. With Haiti’s high AIDS rate, I was worried about these girls contracting HIV/AIDS, gonorrhea, Chlamydia, syphilis, pregnancy. I would give them penicillin shots to hopefully prevent syphilis, but the other diseases I did not have the resources to prevent. I eventually gave my own HIV meds, which I had brought down with me, to one of the girls.

“Another girl, a 14-year-old virgin, tried to fight off her attacker, so he lit a match and threw it on her genital region. I woke up to horrified screams around 3am. Honestly, I don’t know how I slept at all, other than from sheer exhaustion.

“I gave her all the silvadene cream I had, put in a makeshift suprapubic catheter. On the way back to the airfield for my trip home, I tried to get her, ‘admitted,’ to the airfield hospital. She was denied admission. They were only taking, ‘direct earthquake victims.’ Her wounds were considered an ‘indirect,’ cause.

“Sadly, I left her outside the hospital. She will probably become septic and die from her wounds. At this point, maybe that is the best thing for her, rather than have to live with those memories forever, but that is only up to the guy upstairs, not me.

“…all I can advise is do what your heart tells you. And pray.”

Andrea Sciberras

Andrea Sciberras


I used to have to look at the name repeatedly, to make sure I copied it correctly.
Andrea Sciberras. With accents over the, “e’s,” one, grave; one, ague.

It was important. The last name contained two, “r’s.” For some reason, I couldn’t get used to that, two, “r’s.” And I didn’t want to make mistakes, or do anything that implied this letter was anything but really important. I wanted to make it perfect.

Two, “c’s,” made sense to me. Even two, “b’s.” But, two, “r’s?’’ I had to look, two, three times, each time, to make sure I spelled it correctly.

After all, she had picked me to write to, for some reason; and to write regularly to—that was, say, her second or third letter—because she hoped to be a writer, someday.

She’d chosen me, I guess among others, to ask what writers asked each other. I didn’t really think I knew what writers talked about. I never had that kind of courage, to talk to a, “Writer.” But I knew it would not look good for me to misspell her name, or any other word, for that matter.

I’d handled kids. I taught junior high before going to work, manufacturing paragraphs. As a teacher, the relationship between me and my students had—has—always been wondrous to me. Somehow, I could stand before them with the pretense of authority, but each of us knew we were pretending.

I had more experience with language, which I would try my best to share with them. When I was done, if I had done a good job, there really wasn’t any difference any more, and we could drop the pretense about my authority.

I’ve had lots of wonderful run-ins with my junior high kids over the years—they’re around 53 and 54, now—and one hysterical encounter with a girl who suddenly yelped because she realized that the comic on stage at the East Side Comedy Club was her 7th grade English teacher.

I liked to think that I felt that way about adults of all ages, down to junior high students…maybe 6th graders. I wasn’t always confident after that: 5th, 4th, 3rd graders. They scared me.
But I got stuck, once, speaking about journalism to four classes of 3rd and 4th graders at a school in Copiague.

I had understood I would be speaking about teaching to an audience of teachers. Surprise.
With my host teachers, I reacted probably a little too demonstratively, a little too revealingly, even a little too angrily, now that I think of it. But the kids already were coming down the hall, toward the cafeteria, to see the Newsday reporter. I was stuck.

I don’t know what I said in my little speech, but the question and answer session came next. A pint-sized little boy asked me, “When you interview somebody, do you make them sound smarter, if their grammar isn’t too good, or do you let them, you know, sound dumb?”

In twenty years of reporting, no adult had asked me that.

I don’t think an editor asked me that.

I wondered if I had asked me that.

The answer came right into my head, challenging me to tell the truth. I was very proud of the accuracy of my quotes, but the fact is, yeah, I cleaned a quote up, if it had a double negative in it; if it were a mistake, but I knew what the speaker meant; or if it had curses in it that drew more attention to the curses than to the speaker’s point.

I had to admit it, I sometimes fudged, or doctored, or dressed up a quote. And, I never thought of it, “…until you asked me,” I confessed.

The rest of the period, I learned way more than they did.

As a reporter, with high school and college students, I was an ace, especially since I wouldn’t have to come back the following day, or grade papers, or catch people cheating. I would just appear—and here he is, Newsday columnist Ed Lowe—and be gone, an hour and a half later.

And papers. Oh, man, talk to somebody, anybody, who summoned the nerve to ask me to be interviewed for a term paper: high school, college or graduate school. I’ll bet kids who used me as the subject of their research all got A’s.

I talked with Andrea Sciberras last week; first time in quite a few years.

She believes she was in the 2nd or 3rd grade that she wrote me her first few letters. That really surprised me. I thought I was stretching it to suggest I remembered the correspondence going all the way back to maybe junior high.

She said she would check, but she was pretty sure that they went back farther, like 2nd or 3rd grade. She said she still had a box with all my responses in it.

It will be quite some time before she has any real feeling for what that meant to me. It will be some time before I do, too.

She is a doctor now.

I knew that, because she asked me to come to a big party at The Coral House, in Baldwin, celebrating her medical degree and licensing. I met her mother and father, her relatives, friends, and, her, for the first time, or maybe the only time, which is strange, for somebody whose name you know you’ll never, ever misspell.

That was eight years ago.

She teaches now, in Florida, and is one of the leading researchers on HIV/AIDS, and has been to Africa, which she is very enthusiastic about; and she just returned from a trip to Haiti, which she was not very enthusiastic about; not at all.

She writes a newsletter every few years to friends. This last one was pretty horrific.

She says she doesn’t know what to feel, even whether to go back. Everything was so wrong, so criminal, so hopeless.

If you want to know what a hero feels like, how hard it really is, how maddening it is, how impossible it is, stay tuned. If not, it’s all right.


Next: Haiti

Guest Bartender

Guest Bartender


One occupation I missed out on was bartender.

I don’t know why, exactly, although, I suspect this:

There was an oft-told legend in my family (of three, in the era in question, two of them adults—I could argue my points until I or the cocker spaniel fell asleep).

My father’s older brother was tending bar one day, when suddenly, at the exact moment of the end of his shift, he turned in his bar rag, and walked out of the pub, never to return again.

Uncle Billy—or Uncle Bill, or Willie, or Will, or William, or Watusischwartz—died of malignant melanoma before I got to see him or summon him by name, also before I checked the story out.

The story continues: my father (or my grandfather, or grandmother, or some such curious soul) asked him why he had done that (during the Depression, no less). I mean quit a good job, without so much as a conversation, without a reason, (ostensibly), without a difference of opinion between him and the owner, without a beating, without anybody insulting his girlfriend, without allowing him to attend Mass. He just left.

I was captivated.

According to this story, William Francis Lowe, my father’s only brother, whom legend has it could walk on the East River (“I love my Bill,” my grandmother always told my Dad, I guess without the approval of a parenting book), said: “I find myself reaching for a highball.”

(I listened intently. “He found himself reaching for highball.” What was that about, that it make you quit a job? That doesn’t answer anything.).

Well, heads were to have nodded, I judged by my father’s demeanor and tonal change from somber to sacred. I mean, no question. Case Closed. End of story. No need for an explanation, no argument, no difference of opinion, no nothing.

On hearing, “I find myself reaching for a highball,” even I was to nod in affirmation and go about my business, never to ask again, nor need to.

(Subject change. What do you think of those Dodgers?).

Now, when I was younger, I mean, really younger—like, unsure-of-the-meaning-of-highball younger—this puzzled me no end. Trouble was, I could not reveal that.
In the absence of a sibling, I didn’t want to appear stupid. So, I waited patiently for an explanation, maybe, in context, down the road apiece.

None came. And the story was told so reverently, so convincingly, so mysteriously, I knew I would reveal myself as having to be stupid for failing to get it.

So, I never told the story, nor did I ever ask what were the key words in the sentence: “I find myself reaching for a highball.” Whether, “I find myself,” or, “I find myself reaching,” or, “reaching for a highball.”

I think I learned next that a, “highball,” was ginger ale and whiskey. I learned other drinks, some with vodka, some with citrus, some with gin—the difference between a martini and a Gibson, for instance, was a decoration—an olive for the martini, or a pearl onion for the Gibson. That stuck with me. “I’ll have a martini…no, better yet, a Gibson.” Same drink, different awful vegetable.

Some of them smelled good, though it never occurred to me to taste one. I had a beer when I was 14 and knew I was going to be locked in eventually. I experimented, but nothing matched a beer.

It was some time before I learned about, “Toxins.” By that time, I knew the meaning of, “soaked,” as well as, “cast ironed liver,” “stewed,” “three sheets to the wind,” “hammered,” and the rest.

I also had learned other things, but not well enough.

The stroke followed some years later. (“Oh, you mean, like, really poison, poisonous.”).

But somehow, that story made me want to not be what I thought I knew I wanted to be, the Center of Attention, the Ringmaster, The Publican: The Director of Mirth, The Solace of the Forlorn, The Confessor, The Advisor, The Entertainer, The Protector, and The Arbiter of Cusswords.

I tried priest. That didn’t work for me.

Musician would have worried my mother, as would comedian. Depression error people were convinced that civil service would keep anybody alive, but not show business. And half of mine was a family in show business.

I sought to be a cop for a minute, but my father was opposed, and he was a cop. I was a Teacher. I could have stuck it out as that, but for the graduate courses in education.

Then I got job writing stories, with the codicil that I never would get a part-time job without permission.

Done.

“Except…oh well…done. I’ll never be a bartender.”

A role comes to me in the last few decades, “Guest Bartender.” You don’t get paid, so you don’t break the rules. It’s sort of play bartender, classic fantasy summer camp bartender. My world was perfect.

I think my first was at a secret known by hundreds. It was a benefit held by saloon keepers for a saloon keeper friend whose saloon had been destroyed by fire just before Christmas. I don’t know how many guest bartenders there were that night, but I stayed. I tended bar all night. They had to pry me away. Of course, I couldn’t walk the next day, but I didn’t have to.

I served as guest bartender after that maybe a dozen times. The last few, I worked behind whatever bar on slow nights a few nights before, to get used the cash register, the soda gun, the speed rack, and when and how to get out of the way when the real bartender needs it.

When Jimmy the Greek Varelas floated the idea of being a guest bartender a few weeks ago at Abel Conklin’s in Huntington, I started laughing. My inability to laugh the way I used to laugh made me laugh harder. That, in turn, made me laugh harder. I pictured myself tending bar, one arm, one leg, and that made laugh harder.

I was now choking. I had to hang up.

Maybe 60-to-70 people showed up. I served, or re-served, oh, six drinks. Denise, the bartender, picked up the slack.

I have really wonderful friends.

My Laugh

My Laugh.


I may not have been supposed to hear it: “I miss his laugh.”

I’d heard it before, but I didn’t know I was the subject laugher. Now that I think of it, I probably didn’t know what a subject was, or who was talking, or what state we were in. I just knew: I heard that before.

Also, I remember it distracting me in an off-beat way. It brought to mind my father, back in March of 1985, years ago, which still doesn’t seem that way. It was now 11or 13 hours into a three-hour coronary bypass operation. I deduced, brilliant son that I am, that the procedure was headed straight south, and my mother and I were about to lose a very, very good man.

I was 39, he, 69. We were as close as we were not demonstrative about it. I couldn’t imagine life without him, and now I had to.

I have been through just enough, now, that I am not surprised at what pops into my mind on such occasions, and I take care not to let anybody else know. It’s like noticing the crooked nails in a wall under demolition, and sympathizing with the agony of their discovery, after all those years. There they are, naked, supporting nothing.

It’s lunacy, I know. First of all—first, probably through tenth—it’s insane. Nails, especially, old, used nails, don’t get embarrassed. I think, for me, the distraction takes the edge off the destruction.

When my father died, I found myself saying, out of earshot of anyone, “God. I’m going miss his cough.” Now, who would think of that? But nobody else had that cough. You could hear it; pick it out of a hero cop’s funeral, anywhere. The whole world was going to live, forever, without that telltale cough.

Strange thought, I know, but, it helped.

He died. He’d done all the things he wanted, and—I knew more than anybody else—he was escaping the things he didn’t want; dependency, incontinence, blithering, and, mostly, being alive without my mother. At the time, I didn’t know he wanted to escape blithering, but I didn’t know exactly what blithering was, either. Now, I know. And I know that it would have been high up on his list of stages-of-decline, declined.

“Thanks, but I would prefer to skip over that blithering, if you…or…You don’t mind.”

I was right about the cough, too. I still miss it, twenty-five years later.

My laugh didn’t make any difference to me one way or the other, or so I thought. If the comment floated by while I was first realizing I was extent, I suppose I was too preoccupied with my changes: my suddenly lame leg, my dead right arm, my inability to make myself understood, my embarrassment and puzzlement about not going to the bathroom by myself, the split rail fence around my entire bed, which, which meant it was not my bed.

The inability to go the bathroom—by yourself, alone—will obscure the question of whether or not somebody misses your laugh, trust me.

But I overheard it again, more recently—which flies in the orbit of anywhere within the last 20 months or so, “I’m going to miss his laugh”—and it’s hung around the back of my mind, the corners, gables, the out-of-the-way-places, until suddenly—and, I know, everything is, “suddenly,” in this kind of out-of-the-blue stage of life, but it happened, right here, right now, really suddenly—it really made a difference to me. What happened to my laugh?

I missed my laugh. Funny, how that works.

Now, January, 20l0, I am different than I was, then, January, 2008 (Well, yeah. For one thing, I’m conscious.). And I am learning the differences differently, becoming conscious of them, at first subconsciously, and then, consciously-but-what’s-the-difference-really, and then, Wham! Consciously. “Okay. Wait a minute. Where’s my goddamed laugh?”

“Your what?”

(I have a tendency to make dialogue out of whatever goes on in my mind in these encounters.).

“My laugh, dammit! I miss my laugh.”

“You know, you’re alive…”

“Yeah Maybe. But maybe I don’t know that I’m alive. Maybe I’m not myself. I mean, where’s my laugh, if I’m who you say I am? I recall it being loud. I remember that. Not squeaky. Not snickery. Not smarmy. And, sudden; it was sudden. AHaHahaha!

“It snuck up fast on both me and you, and it made us both laugh harder, as if it had surprised both of us. It might have been obnoxious, come to think of it, but it was mine. I remember other people talking about it. I don’t know why I remember it, all of a sudden, but I do.

“I do remember it sometimes started out deep too…I remember Susan telling me that her son, Matt, said she had gotten a phone call while she was out. She said, ‘Yeah, from whom?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, I forgot to ask, but he laughed, the guy who called, and it sounded like either, Dr. Cave, Barry White, or Ed Lowe.’”

“So, now,” my mind says to me, “your throat has hosted a sufficient quiver of vacuums and feeders and air-hoses and needles, and, don’t forget, you yanked them out, too...”

“Well, I’m told, yes…”

“And you throw in the pneumonia…”

“Well, yeah, but, Hell. My laugh?”

“The pipes are scarred, you know, and torn.”

“Can I tell you what I’m dealing with? I heard myself laughing when no one was home, and I stopped short, as if I’d driven over a sleeping kitten. ‘What was that? Who was that?’ It sounded like an air hose trying to operate by itself. A deflated set of piper’s pipes, alone, on the side of the road, after the parade. Ahee…cough…Ahee …What is that?”

“What do you care? You’re alive.”

“I don’t care. Maybe I don’t. But…what if Susan cares? What if she misses my laugh?”

“You’re crazy.”

“I am, no question. But, I’m going to find my laugh.”

Alan Placa II

by Ed Lowe


Alan Placa II

This apologetic essay is in a response to a letter I received from a reader with whom I essentially agree, though she doesn’t seem to see it that way, and…well…I suppose, points out a failure on my part to be clear.

I thought I was clear. I was mistaken.

I thought I was being Waterford Crystalline clear. I mean, bang the drum slowly clear; in your face clear (figuratively speaking, of course).

I will try again, with apologies to persons to whom the points were less than clear.

I should attempt to make my points, first, without any wise-ass remarks. It has been a problem of mine, anyway. “Smart,” remarks have a way of enhancing a point, but usually only among persons who already agree with you. And they have an intimidating way of dismissing anyone who disagrees with you.

“Smart” remarks also draw attention away from a point, as if you wanted to make the point, but wanted to be sure other, “smart,” people were supportive. Maybe the “smart” remarks obscure it.

I’ll bet I have done that. I apologize. I’d like to apologize for every time I’ve done that, but especially for this one. No, “smart remarks” this time.

Here is Msgr. Alan Placa, of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York.

That is my subject.

He should not be a priest. That is my point.

In the last column, I referred to a former seminarian. This is not about a former seminarian. Forget about that. I mentioned personal behavior. That was flippant. This is not about the behavior of men or women; or boys or girls. Forget that.

The woman who wrote me got snagged by a distraction on that score, and I was at fault. I lost her in a reference I should not have made. Placa was investigated for another thing, and I mentioned it, and it had no bearing on my point.

I wrote to her, “Like your son, I was an altar server, too, and, like your son, never saw inappropriate behavior by any priest for all the years I was at St. Martin of Tours Church, in Amityville, or, for that matter, during my four years in St. Pius X Prep. Seminary (1959—1963). Not one.

“My father was a cop,” I wrote, “like your husband. I would have no problem getting the police involved in such a situation either. In fact, I agree with you whole-heartedly there.”

And, priests are human, and deserve mercy, and the benefit of the doubt, and ultimately, understanding, and I will agree with you there, too.

Msgr. Alan Placa is human, deserves mercy, the benefit of the doubt, and, ultimately, understanding.

But, he should not be a priest.

Praying in public, wearing priestly clothes, greeting people genuinely, kindly, affectionately, a priest has the look of someone who cares about you, someone who can be trusted, someone who is…priestly. If you corrupt that, you ought to be expelled, publicly.

We are led to believe—all of us, really, in this country, even those who don’t, “believe;” who are not practicing Catholics; who maybe are Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Cherokee, or Tibetan Monks—that people who choose to live as, “priests,” of whatever denomination, have selected to live to a, “higher calling,” and ought to be admired and respected for such sacrifices as they make to lead such exemplary lives.

Their advice, therefore, which we are inclined to seek—what to do in a dilemma, what to not do—has great weight. It has been known to be the best advice available, because it is tempered by mercy, compassion, love, self-sacrifice. It never is selfish. It never has an ulterior motive.

It never has an ulterior motive. Never.

The system perfected by Placa in the Diocesan scandal was to, first, head-off any involvement with the police, then to divide the family. That was its primary purpose; its ulterior motive, codified by Msgr. Alan Placa.

People come to you for advice, and don’t know that you’re their opposition. Only you, the priest, knows that.

(And, by the way, Fr. So-And-So is under a lot of pressure...Your son, you know, has a vivid imagination. Just ask his friends…You know, Fr. So-And-So works really hard for these kids…Let’s pray together, for all the kids, especially the ones with vivid imaginations…Come back in a few months and we’ll talk some more…Then, come back in some months, and we’ll talk some more…We don’t need police here. Police have enough to think about. Why trouble Police with an incident between an over-ambitious priest and a kid with an over-active imagination.).

And, as I said in the piece, but did not emphasize it enough, all the while Mgsr Alan Placa, as this priest, not only didn’t say he was a lawyer; he didn’t say he was representing the priest; he didn’t say he was representing the diocese.

(Are you for The Church; or for your child, here. Who do you believe? What does it say about you, a Catholic, going against a priest of your Holy Church. What if you’re wrong, believing this kid? Has your kid ever been wrong?)

He didn’t say he was counsel to the diocese.

He didn’t say he was working against the boy, his parents, the relationship between the boy and his parents, anything do with love, peace, protectiveness…no, it was all calculated to pass through the statute of the law’s limitations, so the diocese would have much less financial exposure, in the courts, for money.

And how do we know this? How do we see these motives?

Why, the paper, written by Alan Placa, and sent to other dioceses, telling how we in the Diocese of Rockville Centre handle this nagging, pesky, kid problem.

Here’s how we do it. By Alan Placa.

Have a priest (who is a really a priest-lawyer but never reveals that), serve as a sort of spiritual director to the boy and his parents, telling them (…whatever you tell them, until the Statute of Limitations is exhausted), and then…well, then tell them whatever you feel like telling them; tell them you think they’re crazy, if you want. You’re covered. Tell them anything. Tell them tell to go ahead, go to the police, for God’s sake. Once you’re over the statute, tell them to go start an investigation. “Knock yourself out.”

That’s the way we do things in this diocese.

By Msgr. Alan Placa.

Beradette Castro

Bernadette Castro


I wondered, years ago, if I would ever get to do this.

To give credit where it’s due, I received an anonymous e-mail from a man about 4 or 5 years older than I. He convincingly revealed that he was successful at whatever it is that he did, and, he knew some things about…well…some things.

While reserved, for the sake of dignity, in his compliments, he wholeheartedly encouraged me to keep up a good spirit, and move forward. It was one of those letters from one of those people who rarely if ever do that sort of thing, and I appreciated the hell out of it.

He went on to say that we drank some beers at the same place, “just on the East side of Route 110.” Four occurred to me immediately. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “not together.” That left two. I knew everybody at the other two, right up until they closed.

He wrote, “I was also privileged to be at a luncheon at the Hilton on Rte. 110 when you were the ‘guest’ speaker. Our table was right up front,” he said, “and I believe Ms. Castro was at the same table.”

Bernadette Castro.

I don’t think Castro was at that December meeting, but she sure was at the November meeting.

I had agreed to do my, “thing,” at the organization’s Christmas…oops, sorry…Winter… Holiday meeting-party, in December. I forget the organization’s name (sorry), but it was like the much-larger Long Island Association or the Hauppauge Industrial Association. I planned to tell a story of one the many times I made an ass of myself—this one at Robert and Mary (The Second) Moses’ house. The audience would laugh and the party would be a success.

They booked me around September, which meant they hadn’t thought of anything better yet. But, it was a Friday, no deadline, because the Sunday column had to done by Thursday, which is more than you care to know.

A few days after I said I would do it, the same guy called me back. I thought that they’d had a better idea. But the guy said, “Ms. Castro is our speaker for November.” I waited, I guess, for his point. Then, to break the uncomfortable silence, I said, “Oh…uh…congratulations.” (What do I care about whatever you’re doing in November?). He said, “Will you be coming to hear Ms. Castro?”
(I thought: Will I be coming…are you nuts? I Just agreed to show up at your December Party, to entertain your members, for free.).

I said, “Uh…you know, I think I’m busy on that…what’s that date?” He hung up.

I think it was the Eighties when I first heard Bernadette Castro speak. I suppose it wasn’t until then that I realized I had never heard her as a child. I just assumed I did. I first heard her voice on the Don Imus radio show. It was a friendly voice, more innocent that I expected, and I didn’t yet know why I expected anything.

Imus would feign making fun of Castro’s naiveté, and Castro would get across whatever she wanted to get across, almost in spite of his mockery. Both got exactly what each knew the other wanted out of the exchange: Imus, a foil; and Castro, a few minutes on a hot radio program.

Depending on how he treated Castro, I stood poised to bitterly hate Imus. I didn’t know that at the time, either. She always did well in the exchanges.

During the 1980’s and 1990’s, one of the charities I did work for was the Long Island Arthritis Association, not because I had a particular aversion for arthritis, but a friend of mine from 1969 worked there. Once, when I was hosting five or six events a year for them, she invited me to be an honorary board member.

I reluctantly attended a board meeting, and wound up face-to-face with Bernadette Castro. Her daughter had arthritis and just had a second hip replacement. My daughters were about the same age. Bernadette said it killed her to walk behind her daughter in the supermarket, knowing by her gait she was in great pain.

I was feeling a strange empathy with Bernadette Castro. I realized around then that I had known her all my life, from maybe 3 or 4 years old, from the TV commercials. She was exactly the way I’d imagined she would be, grown up.

I saw her and her husband several times after that. It turned out that my Susan knew her, too, from St. Patrick’s in Huntington. It was one of those many, many good parts of a great life. I knew it, too.

I began to feel like I should not have been so short with the guy from the association. I decided to go. What the hell, it was a Friday.

“Come, come, your seat is up here,” the association guy said. “Table one.” I was lurking in the back. (Table One? I thought.). I followed him.

There was my name, at Table One.

But something was going wrong. The Suffolk County Republican Chairman, John Powell, had appeared, with an entourage, and without warning. He and the entourage were going to sit at Table One, with newly-named Commissioner of the New York State Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historical Places, Bernadette Castro.

I volunteered my seat, which was good, because it already had been volunteered. While not yet indicted for anything (like, oh-I-don’t-know, running a stolen truck chop-shop), Powell had, “that look,” that career criminals get. I didn’t want any pictures of myself and himself together in the same room.

The Association moved me to Table Two. I was about to refuse (Get me out of here!), when it occurred to me that the refusal might be misinterpreted as caring; or, worse, being insulted. I sat as told at Table Two.

Bernadette took the podium. She greeted The Association, the surprise visitors from the county GOP, and said she wanted to talk about the state, her department and where she planned to have maximum impact.

But first, she said, she wanted to acknowledge what she considered to be a treasure on Long Island: Ed Lowe.

Suddenly, I felt very disconnected. It was as if she were talking about me, which she was. She talked about…him…for, I don’t know, maybe two minutes, I’m not sure. I’m frankly not sure of anything after that, except that the rest of her speech was really good. She knew her parks and historical places.

Although, you can’t trust my judgment on that.