Bill Turnier

"I once joined in on one of those escapades. You guys had it down to a science. Someone bought a ticket and sat over near the exit door in the front and then waited for an extremely bright scene and opened the door so management would not be tipped off to the door having been opened by a change in light in the theater. 

That night War and Peace with Audrey Hepburn was playing. I was among those in the alley alongside the theater. When a blinding snowstorm was being shown on the screen, the alley door popped open. The trick was to get seats toward the middle away from the front rows and along the aisles where management thought it would find the trespassers. 

It all went off without a hitch as we all sat there in the middle with our eyes glued to the screen looking perfectly innocent.

Bill" 

Bob Bennett

"Thanks for keeping me honest, Bill....Amazing that you even remember the movie title and actors! 

When the others snuck in after me, I would see...a brief flash of light from the side door...then head silhouettes bobbing at seat level towards the middle, as you said....really hard to keep from laughing. Thanks to this trip down memory lane, I now have another confession item, about 70 yrs late.  

Hey, why not relate your Tusker/Joe Zucconi  and football stories to Vince?  Did he really tell a guy injured in gym with leg fracture pain to 'just run it off'?

JMJ,

Bob "

Bill Turnier

Bob, while almost everyone had teenage fantasies about Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, I was somehow thunder struck by Audrey Hepburn. I really wanted to see War and Peace with Hepburn. In that snowstorm scene, the screen was all white except for a few dark areas that were the result of people or horses.

By the way, one summer I too worked on Cedar Lane in that big Food Fair supermarket down near the bottom of the hill. 

I have a memory of having heard that about Joe but have no direct knowledge of the event, basically hearsay. I do remember one year when he left his Christmas lights hanging on his Teaneck Road house all year long. 

On one occasion in the spring when he had car problems and had to ride the 122 home with a bunch of Prep students as he was standing up front to get off at his stop, Barry Tyne shouted from the back of the bus something like “Joe you think you will get your Christmas lights down for Easter.” Joe respond with something profound such as “Don’t be a wise guy, Tyne.” 

That is my most enduring memory of Joe, along with his always parking his big heavy body on the blocking sleds at football practices urging us on to do better as we slammed up against the blocking pads attached to the sleds.

 Walt McInerney  - SPP 58 stories, sort of.

"Vince,  

I was thinking about you and the really great job that you do.  Thank you.

I feel bad that I didn't meet you at the Reo, but I can't drive that distance anymore.  I have Zoom trouble all the time on my PC.  Maybe I will be OK on my new HP Chrome LT, but I have an appointment on Monday that came up because a cancellation gave me an opening that otherwise would be a month later.

As I was writing  just the above to you, the rest came out.

We have a DeBello down the block that I have to ask if there is a relation with our SPP'58 Steve DeBello.

When I delivered mail at Christmas back in the day, Steve's father saw me and was insistent that I come in for a Christmas drink.  I tried not, very seriously.  When I got back to the head Post Office near Prep, across the street from our Mike Bodner, I was approached by two Postal Inspectors to advise that I was on the list to be fired that day.   However, they didn't fire me after they gave the list to Mr. Lockwood, the Head Postmaster, whom I didn't know had that position.  They said that Mr. Lockwood spoke highly of me. He was my Scoutmaster, and he and his team taught us scouts a lot, but did not waste time getting us badges.  

I was on a camp trip and ran along a trail on a sunny fall day, and stopped coming around a curve while ahead several copperheads, sunning on the trail, and dove into the tall brown grass.   I stopped.  They are part of the two venomous, but not aggressive, snakes in NJ, not to play with. 

We played cards with Steve at his house while he was in school, and again at his house several years later when he was in the Boonton area and owned a business.  Mike Bodner also played cards at Steve's house, as did one of the really great guys, Bobby Goode, at whose house we also played cards, and Charlie Matthews.  Mike and I were cruising Jackson Ave, and I introduced him to a really great girl, Nancy, and they got married, not that night when we went for pizza in Bayonne.  We would visit them at their third-floor apartment in a three-family house on the Boulevard near Winfield Ave, JC;  later, they moved to Monmouth County. Mike may have been the best national financial credit reporter at Dunn & Bradstreet.  

I worked at D&B until I took a position in JC, on Westside Ave at Stegman Pkwy. Our SPP classmates would get together at a bar in Avon; two younger guys we never met before challenged us to a beer on shuffleboard. Mike and I won the beers.  We used to have lots of practice at Pops on Bergen Ave near Fulton Ave, JC.    

Sad to say, but none of them are still with us.  That's Steve, Mike, Bobby, and Charlie.  I think that's the order.  Maybe the last two are mixed up. 

We knew Goode's wife, Barbara, who died before Bobby, was liked by all of us from Mueller's Ice Cream Parlor, one of the greatest places, during SPP and after.    Barbara died, and in a year or two, he did also.    The one time they were going to the SPP '58 annual party, Barbara was ill as she often was.     About a year after we graduated, we were leaving a party in an empty store on Ocean Ave. at the corner of Bartholadi Ave, Charlie Matthews was knocked out by a sucker punch, and about eight bad guys jumped me.  From across the street I heard, "I'm coming, Wally," followed by, "Back to back," and Bobby and I beat the eight of them before the police came.   Someone yelled to Bobby, Your shirt is all blood, were you stabbed?"  The shirt was torn off.  Bobby had broken someone's nose.  With Bob's strength and skills in every sport, he may have broken several.  Only two people in the world called me "Wally,"  my mother and Bobby.    

The bad boys' gang was part of those I had a fight with in the 7th grade.  In a sand lot football I sacked their quarterback two times, and he punched me in the back.  Before I could retaliate, our QB and team captain pulled me away.  You may know him, Marty "Bootsy" Walsh, a great basketball star at St. Al's HS, slightly older than the Vinny Earnst everyone knew.  The 3rd time I sacked the QB, he ran up and punched me awfully hard.  I spun around and punched him the way that my father taught me in the 2nd grade.  That QB had to be helped up and off the field, where he stayed till the end of the game.   Either he or his twin brother died in the "9/11 World Trade Center."   A few weeks later, after I finished my 7th-grade duty of school street crossing security to be sure no one had a problem near the school, I had to run away from 10 or so of the gang that QB was part of.  I ran down a so narrow alley with a lock on the high gate at the end, that they had to face one at a time.   I gave them what my father taught me.  Those climbing over the locked gate were grabbed as they jumped at me and were thrown on top of the crowd.   Eventually, they gave up and walked away; some must have crawled.  

That summer, my father was teaching my mother to drive at our new summer house.    She banged the car into something in the yard.   After the car repairs were done and paid, Dad and I went back to the auto repair shop to tell the owner that he overcharged for used parts and charged for new.   The guy said, "Get lost," picked up a weighted device, and started to swing.  Dad blocked and clobbered him the way he taught me, and threw the guy's checkbook in the middle of the desk and told him to fill it out and sign which was done.  As dad was leaving, he asked the other 5 guys, criminal-looking,  in the room.  Almost together, they said something like, "No, no, no."

Less than two years later, we were in the weight room at SPP when a sophomore could not pick up a bar with a weight about 10 pounds more than I weighed.   When he dropped it, I said something like, "Ow."   He said to me very angrily, "You do it."  I said that I never did and did not want to.   Finally, I tried picking up while he laughed at me.  Finally, I clean jerked and lifted, and he had nothing more to say.

This started with a sentence or two, and then brought me many thoughts.  I stop here."

Randy Orlowski

"Mac, 

Funny how one memory leads to others.

I sorted mail one Xmas at that PO on Washington St, me, Barry and Jack Nies Prep BBall standout and career NBA ref.  Bodner was a SP Grammar school classmate and a great guy.  

Bernie once told me about a tussle he had with you when he was playing pool or ping pong in your basement.  Don’t know the details other than he said you were someone not to mess with.

I remember Bootsy, but did not know him; nor did I know Vinnie Ernst until I got a surprise call from him.  His teammate at St. Al’s, Bobby Sponza, gave him my name when Vinnie, as competitive as he was, was asking who he thought were pretty good ball players.  Sponza went to SP grammar and another fixture in our schoolyard.

Vinnie invited me to meet him at Audubon Park for some one on one games.  So on a summer day I took the red bus, walked up from Westside Av.  and played him 6 games.  Ernst 5, me 1.  We then walked over to his house where his mom made us some sandwiches.  

Later I mentioned the games to Jed Datteo and think he made mention of  the encounter in his “Jersey Journal”.      Vinnie past away several years ago.

Yes, great job,  Vince.  Your dedication to ‘58’s spirit is beyond admirable."