195 Centre Street, P-51 Mustangs, And, Me: Reflections of a Semi-Famous Writer

By Ralph Joseph Ferrusi

195 Centre Street: It’s summertime, and the kitchen windows are open and a warm, gentle breeze is blowing the spotless white lace curtains into the room.

P-51 Mustangs: In my opinion, it’s the most perfect airplane ever to take to the skies.

And, Me: I never “wanted to be a writer”. I wanted to be a pilot, and fly P-51 Mustangs like Don Gentile, and Ratsy Preddy. So, I took a flying lesson, and found I really didn’t like flying. My Life-Long Dream of Being a Pilot shattered, the next day I wrote my first Award-Winning newspaper column, and, it was published. Yeah, right...

I began writing this book in 2015, putting together some ruminations and reflections. I slowly added to it over the years: new things I wrote, old things I discovered I had written, some things that other people wrote that made me laugh out loud, or, knocked my socks off.

Welcome to:

195 Centre Street, Buchanan, New York, U.S.A.
P-51 Mustangs, B-17’s, B-24’s, B-25’s, PBY’s, F-82’s.
Auschwitz, Birkenau, Vietnam, 9/11.
Terciera in the Azores, Montecatini Alto in Tuscany and Rodney Bay on Saint Lucia.
A 1936 Ford Five-Window Coupe and a 1963 Sting Ray Split-Window Coupe.
Walking from Maine to Georgia—twice—on the world-famous Appalachian Trail.
Allesandro Botticelli, Les Mis, Chateau Petrus.
“Winning”, paper clips, and farts.
And, A Thousand (Or So) Things You Don’t Know About Heart Attacks...

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663227652

Ralph Joseph Ferrusi

Free-lance writer/author Ralph Ferrusi has sat in the cockpits of three P-51 Mustangs: two “D’s” and a “K”. He began “seriously” writing in 2004 and though a New York Times Non-selling Author, now has over a half-million words in print. A long-time vegetarian, he has walked the entire 2,179-mile Maine to Georgia Appalachian Trail twice: 4,217 miles. He and his wife Kathy, long-time travelers, have visited 65 countries. They currently reside on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, with their rescue-rhinoceros Dora. Just kidding...she prefers “Penelope”

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Copyright © 2021 Ralph Joseph Ferrusi.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-2764-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-2765-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021916609

iUniverse rev. date: 09/24/2021

FOREWORD

Kick back and try to imagine it’s 2015. I’d have to dig up my 2015 Engagement Calendar to see if I could get specific details of my life back then. For many years I used engagement calendars as diaries, until, for no reasons I can now fathom, abruptly stopped this on July 29, 2019.

But, and this goes without saying, one of the big benefits of 2015 is I was Six Whole Years Younger than I am right now. The point I’m getting at is in 2015 I was, writing-wise, pretty much at the top of my game, riding the crest of 11 years of award-winning weekly newspaper columns, and just beginning my now-ongoing run of Boating On the Hudson and Beyond monthly articles. Not to mention my two iUniverse books, Catskill Tales and Trails, and Uncle Ben, Uncle Bob, Uncle Joe, Uncle Pete, P.D., and Pop.

I can’t say I always wanted to be a writer. As a kid I wanted to be a pilot: to fly P-51 Mustangs like Don Gentile, and Ratsy Preddy. But, at some point in my grown-up life I took a flying lesson, and found I really didn’t like flying a Cessna. It was too noisy, and, too bumpy. C’est la vie... So, my Life-Long Dream of Being a Pilot shattered, the next day I wrote my first Award-Winning newspaper column, and, it was published. Yeah, right...

For a long time I had no idea What I wanted to be. I ended up in IBM, and eventually left to become a fine artist: an oil painter. The Second Coming of Alessandro Botticelli. I produced 22 paintings—what I always thought was the same output as Vermeer—and sold one. I was soon back at IBM. Then one day they canned me: magic markers and ball-point-pens were more important than I was. When I was let go, I thought it was The Worst Thing That Ever Happened To Me.

I started writing. In reality, as the saying goes, I paid my I-Want-To-Be-A-Writer dues big time, like most of the millions of other wannabees out there. I’d write something I thought was profound, immediately mail it out, then be shocked and disappointed when it was rejected: I still have a thick manila file folder labeled Rejections.

So how did I get my Big Break and become semi-famous??? Blind luck. A good friend’s wife informed me that one of the local newspapers was looking for an outdoors/adventures writer. I began writing columns. At first they sounded like antibiotic prescriptions: yawn... But I eventually relaxed, got the hang of it, found a style, and received all kinds of I like your column e-mails and letters (Interestingly, only two of the 558 columns I wrote are included in this book. They were both rejected by the worst editor I’ve ever had).

I officially began writing this book on April 19, 2015, ten days after I resigned from the newspaper, sick to death of dealing with the editor. I started putting together some ruminations and reflections, mainly to keep me busy writing—at this point in life, I must write—when I was between magazine articles. I slowly kept adding to it over the years: new things I wrote, old things I discovered I had written, things that other people had expressed that made me laugh out loud, or, knocked my socks off.

The working title was originally ME, but I somehow knew there was another (or several other) ME’s out there, so, just for the helluva it, I began telling people my working title was There Are Probably Only Two Or Three People On This Entire Planet Who Will Give A Flying Shit About This. The people that got it—My Kind of People—laughed...

My Uncles... book is 264 pages, and about 80,000 words long, so I figured if and when this book broke 80 grand, I’d call iUniverse. On Wednesday, June 30, 2021 I broke 80,000, but since I was on a roll I was up to 86,197 when I dialed 844-349-9409...

This isn’t a serial/linear document: born/high school/work/etc. It’s pretty much a series of thoughts/reflections/writings/look-backs/observations, etc. And, it’s not a tell-all: women, marriage, kids. If anything, it’s about a deep commitment to writing.

A word of warning/caution: various forms of the word shit appear 41 times. Considering this was a work-in-progress for six years, this is not excessive.

And, various forms of fuck appear a mere 15 times: sometimes in my writings, sometimes in quotes, and, mostly for emphasis...

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

195 CENTRE STREET

195 Centre Street, October 11, 2004

Mom, Pop, And 195 Centre Street

Mom

Pop

Grams-isms

Pop’s Favorite Joke, plus

2 North

Pop’s Last Anniversary Card For Mom

P-51 MUSTANGS

Don Gentile on the P-51 Mustang:

In My Opinion...

Mustangs I’ve Sat In!

A Tale Of Two Mustangs

A World Without P-51 Mustangs

The Last Mustang???

Let’s Talk About the P-82/F-82 Twin Mustang

Back to 1943

Some Facts and Figures

Surviving F-82’s

The F-82 and Me

A Twin Mustang in the Sky Again

A Tale of Four Old Crows

U.S.A.A.F Captain Don Gentile

The NINE O NINE

The NINE O NINE Revisited

The NINE-O-NINE

Let’s Talk About B-24 Liberators

Tondelayo!!!

My All-time Favorite Airplanes

AND, ME

Summations And Ruminations

Summing It Up At 60

Summin’ It Up At 60

This could be called Summing It Up At 70...

Me, Then

Scourges, Etc That Didn’t Exist Then

Turning Points

Life Changers

Magic

Non Travel

Travel Related

I Took Another Pass At This In December 2015, and Here’s What Came Up

Moments...

Things I’ve Let Go Of

Things I Hate

Things I love

2015 additions, written before I found the 2000 document

The Golden Years

Ralph J. Ferrusi Author Profile

50 Years: Written for my 5⁰th Hendrick Hudson High School reunion: 2005

A Friend Jim’s 5⁰th birthday

Writers/Authors/Books

A Bill Bryson Funny Story

Writing/Essays/Profound Thoughts

Writing, From Sometime In 2007???:

Meet The Author

If Anybody Had Come

Luna

Small Pleasures

Heroes/Persons I Admire

Men That Changed My Life

The Cruelest Word in the English Language...

Thoughts on Winning

Happy/Not So Happy

That Picture, right over there...

US Presidential Qualifications

Christmas update Note Goof

Twin (From Catskill Tales and Trails)

Other News

Affluence...

Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeders

Pop Music, 1966 To 2009

Nothing Left to Ooze; My Life as a Leper and Other Career Moves

Henry Hudson

It Doesn’t Get Much Better’n This

Mort

March 30,2015 Terrifying Moments

And, While We’re At It, How’s About The Using Up Of Eight Of My Nine Lives???

Poems

#47, Sat. July 20, 1985

On Being 78....

Wednesday Morning, December 9, 2015

2016

The Canyon of Heroes, 2009

Local Boy Makes Good

Grown Up

Lucy Jordan

Kath’s Retirement

The Unicorn of Assateague Island

Then And Now: April 1, 2013

Scourges, etc

The River, and, The City

Eulogies

Pure Christine

Meme Biourd: March 16, 1911-February 15, 2016

Johnny Rit, Sonny, and Patty

My Cousin Johnny

A Few Good Words

Some Words Of True Wisdom, And, Some Funny Things

A magazine ad

From my 70’s Nothing Book

Country Music Wisdom

One of my IBM Out of the Office e-mail notifications

And what do YOU do, Ralph???

My All-time Favorite Limerick

Farts

Paper Clips

Travel/Adventure

Our Vacations, 1985 To 2020

A Tale of Two 777’s

My New Favorite Place in the World

Boating in the Azores: Paradise Found

Getting to Scotland, September 2013

Alitalia

Ten Guardian Angels; in Belize???

An Extraordinary Day

Saranac May 2015

Hello, Goodbye, Please, and Thank You

Auschwitz, Birkenau

A Single Drop of Water??? Or Rum???

A Tale of Ten Cities

In Defense of Real B&B’s

Scotland

Goal: More American Tourists To Scotland

Scotland/Ireland Similarities

Differences

So.........Let’s Talk About Scotland:

CARS: My Recollections of Each One

My First Car: a 1950 Plymouth fastback

1936 Ford coupe

1958 Plymouth Belvedere two-door hardtop

1934 Ford convertible

1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Split Window Coupe

Fiat 600

Fiat 600 (for parts)

1964 Dodge Dart two-door hardtop

1972 Ford Pinto fastback

1974? Fiat X 1/9

1962 Chevy Impala two-door hardtop

1985 Honda CRX

1986 Honda CRX Si

1991 Honda Civic Si hatchback

1996 Dodge Neon four-door

1996 BMW 328i convertible

2006 Chevy Aveo hatchback

2009 Smart FourTwo Passion Coupe

The Appalachian Trail...

Ode to the Appalachian Trail: Rediscovered in November 2020

ALDHA Gathering, October 2011

Kath AT thoughts: October 2016

Little Claire And The Flamingos

Appalachian Trail Timeline

Appalachian Trail Quotes

Planting Seeds: Trail Magic Becomes A Two-Way Street

Taking a Step Back

My Appalachian Trail Favorites 1971-1975, 1979-2000 First Pass

My Appalachian Trail Favorites 1971-1975, 1979-2000 Second Pass

The Last Mountain

Cairn Memories: In Defense Of Cairns

War/The Military

Land Mines in Vietnam

Lieutenant General Hal Moore on War

I Was A Soldier Once, And Young

9/11

9/11, Vindicated

Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Slack

HudsonValley Honor Flight Mission #5, September 27, 2014

HudsonValley Honor Flight Mission #22, April 13, 2019

My Saturday, April 13, 2019 words at the farewell dinner in Washington, DC

POLSKA...

Health/Medical

Vegetarianism, Meditation, Fitness, And, Cancer

Carpal Tunnel Release:

Happy Birthday, Sis!

A Thousand (Or So) Things You Don’t Know About Heart Attacks, or, Open Heart Surgery

Hospitals → Surgery

ICU → Discharge

Discharge → Home: The Long Road to Recovery

Some Heart Attack Information To Ponder

29 Years at 34 Kim La...

The Early Days

Home Improvements

The Pool

Buttoning Up

Thoughts While Splitting Firewood At 34 Kim Lane On A Cold, Damp, Dreary October 2016 Morning

24 Years Later

Raking Leaves, November 2015

Feedback

Miscellany

Lists

Countries...

Places I would like to get to in the future

While we’re at it, let’s do Border Crossings

And, we might as well do states I’ve been to

Movie Scenes/Songs

Close Encounters With The Rich And Famous

Les Mis, and movies...

Food and Drink

The Eight Greats

The Seven Dwarfs

Numbers

Principal 1998 New York Yankees

Friday, October 29, 1999

My Mona Lisa

The Library Announcement

Jackson-isms

A 1997 Status Report

IBM and Alessandro Botticelli

Fabulous

Global Warming, or, Naturally Occurring Cycles???

My Obituary

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Mom and Pop, Josephine Theresa and Ralph Joseph Ferrusi, who instilled in me—by word and by example—their Polish and Italian Old Country values:

Respect your elders.

Respect women.

Be honest.

Work hard: keep your nose to the grindstone.

These became deeply ingrained in me at an early age, and I’ve strived to live by these basics all my life.

195 CENTRE

STREET

Cover.jpg

195 CENTRE STREET,

OCTOBER 11, 2004

P1.jpg

It’s summertime, and the kitchen windows are open and a warm, gentle breeze is blowing the spotless white lace curtains into the room. The sun is shining through the window over by the sink, and everything is fresh and clean and smells good. Mom keeps it that way.

The house is small: the kitchen is tiny, smaller than the bathrooms in most modern houses. The two bedrooms upstairs aren’t much bigger than modern walk-in closets. The living room/dining room area is tiny, and in the winter the only heat comes up through a heavy yard-square iron grate in the middle of the downstairs hall floor. Beneath the grate is a coal-burning furnace.

I am 7 years old, my sister is 5. Mom is in the kitchen. Pop is at work at the vinyl wall-covering factory. He’s there 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and brings home something like 50 dollars on a good week. Mom keeps the house clean and orderly, and Pop works long, long hours.

They both grew up in small, cold, electricity-less houses in Greentown, a community of Polish and Italian immigrant factory workers, on the other side of the New York Central Railroad tracks. They both feel fortunate to be living the American dream in this small house on 195 Centre Street, Buchanan, New York, USA. Me, I just can’t wait to finish my tasteless bowl of shredded wheat so that I can run outside and play in the summer sunshine.

60 years fly by. Pop has been retired for 30 years, since the vinyl wall-covering company pulled out and moved to somewhere in Pennsylvania. He lives alone in the tiny house. Mom has been in an Alzheimer’s ward in a nursing home for over 2 years. At 92, Pop is not the housekeeper Mom always was. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he was quite abruptly thrust into the role of sole housekeeper at age 90.

Earlier, Mom and Pop shared the load in the traditional old country manner: he never complained about the long hours at the factory, and kept the outside of the house, the roof, the yard, the garage, and the car in good repair, while Mom cooked, put food on the table, cleaned the house, did the laundry, and looked after us kids. Pop does give it a try: he vacuums occasionally, washes some of his clothes in cold water in the bathtub, and ties up stacks of newspapers to be recycled, but somewhere along the line, on his way to 90+, his overall perceptions of order and neatness slowly, gradually moved far to the left of center.

Everything in the house remains where it was when we tricked Mom into the nursing home: the furniture, the curtains, the rugs, the pictures, the books and knick-knacks. They are all either threadbare, dusty, and/or faded, and buried in unbelievable clutter: Pop’s clothes, shoes, laundry, stacks and piles of newspapers, flyers, and junk mail, tissues, discarded tissues, loose change, paper, plastic bags, empty VA pill bottles…

The house is an assault on the senses. It smells: must, dampness, mold. The bathroom and the kitchen are the worst. As hard as my sister and I and various housekeepers try to keep the house and the yard clean, neat, and orderly, Pop somehow stays ‘way ahead of us, circumventing our efforts. We wonder how he manages to accumulate so much clutter and junk and paper and plastic in such short periods of time.

The lace curtains are still hanging in the kitchen. They are gray, spotted, stained, and limp. They don’t billow in the summer breezes anymore; the kitchen windows haven’t been opened in years. The sunshine has a hard time penetrating the dingy gray-ness of the curtains. Mom will never live in this house again, and for whatever reasons, the newspaper piles and mayhem have become normal for Pop.

When I walk into the kitchen I flinch at the food and fruit – uneaten, half eaten, and to-be-eaten—wrappers, utensils, dishes, glasses, cups, and crusted pots and pans piled on the table, in the sink, and on the stove and the small counters. Over the years I have grown to accept all of this, but there are times when I look over at the small window by the sink and try to picture it wide open, a warm, gentle breeze blowing the white lace curtains into the room, the sun shining through them, everything spotless and clean, just the way Mom kept it. And I try to imagine what it was like to have nothing more to do than force down the dry shredded wheat, before running outside to play in the small, neat, trim, uncluttered yard.

MOM AND POP

Mom and Pop each lived to 94.They were born to Polish and Italian immigrants in 1912 and 1913. They lived the American middle class dream: a little house on a quiet street in a typical middle class American small town. Both drove, but they never had more than one car.

Pop worked long hours in a factory. Mom cooked, made the beds, washed the dishes, and took care of their two kids. They passed along Old World values to them: work hard—nose to the grindstone, be honest, respect your elders, respect women.

Their life-long diets were typical middle class meat and potatoes. Every once in a while Mom cooked an apple pie. They never dieted or experimented with their diets. They were never concerned with calories and never read food labels/ingredients. They just ate: Mom cooked, the family ate what Mom bought at the town’s within-walking-distance little grocery store, and, cooked.

They were healthy most of their long lives in spite of never running, going to a gym, or having personal trainers. Pop sat in his favorite chair in the small living room evenings and read the newspapers. I don’t think Mom ever did (or had the time to). I don’t think either finished high school.

They did their best with what they had and what they knew. They worked hard and brought us up right. They were good parents, good people, good neighbors, and good citizens.

Pop had as serious stroke on April 3, 2016, and died in a rehab center on July 5th. He always said he wanted to go out kicking and screaming: no DNR. Mom lived the final years of her life in a VA Alzheimers ward. She died September 11, 2017, the day before my birthday.

I shall forever be indebted and thankful for their guidance, love and care, and for the fine examples they set and passed along.

November 2020

Mom, Pop, And 195 Centre Street

Mom

P2.jpg

Mom was a great Mom. She was a fine lady.

She nourished, encouraged, educated, and inspired us, with quiet strength, determination, and her strong intuition, both by example and by deed.

When I began to travel the world, she told me to keep my eyes wide open and To see, and see what I saw: to soak it all up and take it all in.

She always told waitresses they were beautiful, no matter how un-beautiful they might have been.

She could never resist little jokes, and would always tell people that she was polish Polish.

When we drove down to the Croton Dam on our Friday rides in the Neon, she would remind Pop and I that it was not the Croton Dam, it was the Croton Darn.

Mom and Pop were inseparable. It’s hard to find a photograph of just Mom; it was always Mom and Pop. On February 23, 2006, their 70th anniversary, Pop handed Mom a card. One word was written on the envelope, in Pop’s squiggly, 93-year-old handwriting: Us. It said it all.

I truly hope that they are now together again, in some nice place, and they are both 22–23 years old, and will be there forever.

The last words I ever said to Mom, just last Friday, were the words I always said to her before I reluctantly walked out of the Fairhaven ward in the VA:

Love you a bunch, Mom.

Pop loves you too.

You’re The Best.

She was a great Mom.

She was a fine lady.

Pop

P3.jpg

He’s tall and strong, standing at ease in his Army khakis: Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1945. He’s my dad: a good soldier, a good man. I’m proud of him.

As I come through the front door he glances at his watch: 10:45 AM Friday: right on time. He greets me in his soft, quiet voice, and extends his right hand—a big, workingman’s hand, with long, strong fingers. The skin on the back of his hands is thin, the blood vessels purple and prominent, but his grip is firm. On the ring finger of his left hand is a small, worn, gold wedding band. Mom put it there 67 years ago.

He’s sitting in his chair in the tiny living room of his tiny house in small-town Buchanan, New York. The chair is worn and sagging. It’s old, and looks it. Pop does too. His hair is pure white and a little on the longish side, as are his sideburns. The skin on his face and neck sags; he has dark age spots. His eyebrows, and the hairs in his nose and ears are dark, long, and unruly, in need of a trim. A close shave is impossible anymore—the skin on his face and neck is too loose. His eyes though, are clear, bright, and curious. Alert and attentive, at age 92 he rarely smiles. When he does, his eyes and his face light up. Laughter is a rare gift, as when he speaks Italian.

He’s a thin and frail 130 pounds. His body is stooped and worn. His once-broad shoulders slump forward, his chest is caved in. His limbs are thin and bony. A grayish undershirt peaks out the top of his threadbare dark grey/green cotton shirt. All the super-duty laundry detergent in the world will never get it white again. A pair of dark green, permanently soiled factory-worker pants are precariously held up by an antique black leather belt.

He pulls on his beat-up black faux running shoes. This everyday task is a major struggle, and takes forever. I watch, and don’t interfere: I respect his dignity. He doesn’t tie the laces. He glances at his watch, and begins the slow, laborious process of standing up. It’s time to go to the diner for lunch. Getting up out of the chair is a fight with gravity; a struggle. He is determined. Walking is not a simple task anymore: he shuffles, stooped over. He is very unsteady on his feet at times. A cane has appeared from somewhere. I ask him about this. He doesn’t answer.

When the bill comes at the diner, I hand it to him. He studies it, calculates a generous tip, reaches into his pocket, and puts it on the table. We visit mom in the Alzheimer’s ward at the nursing home. I watch him sitting next to her, holding her hand, looking at her the same as he did 67 years ago.

He’s tall and strong. A good man. A very good man…

Grams-isms

Mom loved little puns; she could not resist them. One of her favorites was I’m polish Polish!

Here’s some more:

Faster than a herd of turtles

Take a sit

Bass-ackwards

She cooks her carrots and pees in the same pot.

Glad to see your back (if you were standing in front of Grams)

Sewer/sewer (Mom worked as a sewer in the little place in Buchanan by the circle. The sewer was out front on Tate Avenue…)

Some Grams sayings:

Ah hah, she cried, as she waved her wooden leg. Ah hah…

I’ll give you back to the Indians.

I’ll kick you in the ankle.

Three men in a boat and the oars leaked.

I hate to see you go,

I hate to see you go,

I hope to hell you never come back

I hate to see you go.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Don’t take any wooden nickels.

He’s working steady. (An actor in a movie or on the TV)

Better out than in (burps and farts)

Go play in traffic (to Danielle and Emily Berta)

I think he/she has a couple of pages stuck together.

Love hurts.

Pop’s Favorite Joke, plus

Some people tell jokes, but for the life of me right now I can’t think of a single relative, friend, acquaintance, co-worker, etc who tells jokes: Did you hear the one about...??? I don’t tell jokes: I get nervous and self conscious. Pop didn’t tell jokes either, but there’s one that I remember him telling. It went something like this:

Four moles were crawling through a tunnel.

The first mole said I smell carrots.

The second mole said I smell turnips.

The third mole said I smell radishes.

The last mole said I smell mole asses.

Pop also told the story about a co-worker who injured his arm on the job and was staying home collecting Workman’s Comp.

One day he came in to show his boss how badly injured he still was.

He said to the boss, Before I was injured I was able to raise my arm this high., and he raised his arm straight up over his head.

Now I can only raise it this high., and he raised his arm straight out from his shoulder.....

Pops and I once repaired a cement porch on the house on Old Hopewell Road. Both of us had only layman’s experiential with cement, but we forged ahead and the end result was passable, but pretty much a cob job. Pop summed it all up with this statement, that I very often quote: It may not be perfect, but it’s a helluva lot better than when we started. He also often greeted up with, Where the hell have you been???, and also had a phrase that I don’t recall anyone else ever saying: Shit, piss, and corruption.

2 North

a.k.a. The Alzheimer’s Ward, Autumn 2002

The door to the ward is locked. It’s a punch-in-the-combination lock, and the combination is 1234*. None of the patients on the ward can figure this out. There are about 40 patients on the ward, and most of them are in wheelchairs. They have forgotten how to walk. A majority of them are propped up in the wheelchairs, with their heads lolled to one side or the other, dozing or staring at nothing. Most of the few that aren’t wheelchair-bound are sitting in chairs, many of them are dozing.

There are always a dozen or more patients lined up in the room with the TV. It drones away, but no one is paying any