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Monday, October 19, 2009
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Thursday, October 15, 2009
Yesterdays - Five Points Columbia, SC
Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina
Yesterdays at Five Points, Columbia, South Carolina, on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, for the now annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. This was an early one, when Duncan was Grand Marshall and the parade ended at Five Points.
From Ocean City to Five Points, Columbia, SC
Working at Mack & Mancos Pizza on the Ocean City (NJ) boardwalk was certainly a major part of the life of anyone who worked there.
Two of the people I met working there were Duncan and Scott MacRae, two of the best people you would ever get to meet. They were from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where their mother was a school teacher and there is now a school named MacRae School after her.
Duncan had worked at Mack & Mancos previously, years before I got there, and was a legend, having left to serve as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and returning a hero,he could have done anything in the world, but went back to work twerrling pizzas for the summer for Mr. Mack.
His younger brother Scotty, handsome, brash and immensely likeable, who left Mack & Mancos to be a bartender at the Anchorage, through Joe Tricheck, the brother-in-law of owner Andrew "Anchorage" Carnelgia, and a regular customer at Mack & Mancos with Andrew's sister.
When he came back, Duncan could do no wrong. They say he was let off by a Marine helicopter right out in front on the beach, and walked in with his flight suit and helmet under his arm.
He drove a fancy sports car, I think it was a Corvette Stingray, and he couldn't get arrested no matter how fast he went or what crazy assed thing he did on a binge, because he had done his time in Nam and was everyone's hero. On one rainey Sunday he took me over to Bay Shores for the Sunday afternoon matinee show to see Malcom and the Bonnievilles (or was it Hereafter?), and introduced me to Buddy Tweill, Malcolm and real rock & roll.
Besides working at Mack & Mancos, Duncan had also worked in the kitchen as a cook at the Crab Trap, the best restaurant in Somers Point for decades, and with Scott's experience as a bartender at the Anchorage, they decided to go into business for themselves, with Duncan handling the kitchen and Scotty taking care of the bar.
With a partner, they bought a small bar and restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina, near the university and not far from the State House, and called it Yesterdays, with a nostalgic twist.
When Brian and I were on the return leg of our first trip to the West Coast (circa 1977), we stopped by Columbia to say hello to Scotty and Duncan and see how they were doing.
Very well thank you.
While still small, they were making money, and expanding, eventually buying up the entire block, including the supermarket for its parking. Later they expanded and opened Yesterdays II, in a suburban neighborhood, and brought Bob Brumage, another Mack & Manco guy, in to run it.
From what I understand, Duncan is now retired and living on his saleboat somewhere where its warm, but one summer he visited his old haunts in Ocean City and Somers Point, and found me at Charlie's in Somers Point.
I had since left Mack & Mancos and was trying to make it as a part time teacher and writer, and had earlier done an interview with Ocean City native and superstar journalist Gay Talese. It was a front page cover story in the local weekly SandPaper, and was an interview with Talese conducted at his Ocean City home, sort of an "at home with" type piece.
Gay Talese's wife, Nan Talese is a publisher with a major publishing house, and one of the first things Gay said to me was that his wife was reading this wonderful manuscript that they were going to publish by a new, young writer Pat Conroy. The book, "Prince of Tides."
Of course Conroy's masterpiece matched and surpased his other workes, "The Lords of Discipline" and "The Great Santini," and established him as one of the great American writers of our time. All three books have been made into movies, with Barbara Streisand producing and acting in "The Prince of Tides."
Duncan MacRae didn't know I had interviewed Talese, who had paid tribute to Pat Conroy when he caught up with me at Charlie's Bar in Somers Point, but while rehashing old times, he thought I would appreciate the fact that the brother of a famous writer, Pat Conroy, worked as a bartender at Yesterdays, and Conroy is a frequent customer. They even have a special booth where Conroy and other local writers hang out, and had a little Algonquin circle going.
They also had a hot band that lived nearby, Hootie & the Blowfish, popular with the college kids and about to go national with a few hit singles and a some popular albums. So with Conroy as the writer in residence, and Hootie & the Blowfish neighbors and regular customers, Yesterdays had developed quite the popular flair.
Over a few beers at Charlie's, Duncan related the story told by Conroy, that he had to overcome the objections of the publisher's lawyers to include Yesterdays in the novel. They thought that since the novel was a work of fiction, and Yesterdays a real place, clearly identified in the story, would leave them open to libel or some case, should the owners object to being mentioned in an ostensibly fictional work.
Conroy persisted however, and in the end, as part of his literary masterpiece, we have Yesterdays, enshrined in all its glory.
"Prince of Tides" (Pat Conroy, p. 528-529)
....On the football field I struggled for three years with my own sense of inadequacy. I was surrounded by superb athletes who gave me daily lessons in deficiencies I brought to the game. But I lived in the weight room in the off-season and began building my body with deliberate intent. When I entered the university I weighed one hundred sixty-five pounds. When I left four years later I weighted two hundred ten pounds. As a freshman I bench-pressed one hundred twenty pounds; as a senior, I bench pressed three hundred twenty. I blocked on the kickoff team and was a third string defensive back in my sophomore and junior years until Everett Cooper, the kickoff returner, got hurt during a Clemson game my junior year.
When Clemson scored, I heard Coach Bass call my name.
And my years in college turned golden.
When I went back to receive the kick-off, no one in the stands except Sallie and Luke and my parents knew my name.
The Clemson kicker approached the all and I saw that awesome movement of orange helmets down field and the roar of sixty thousand voices as that ball lifted into pure Carolina sunshine and traveled sixty yards in the air, where I caught it in the end zone and took that son of a bitch where it was supposed to go. "The name, ladies and gentleman, is Wingo." I screamed as I tucked the ball under my arm and took off up the left hand side of the field. I was hit on the twenty-five, but spun out of the arms of the tackler, and, cutting back across the field, a Clemson player dove and missed me with an arm tackle. I put a move on a defensive back and leapt over two of my team mates who had taken down two Clemson boys. I angled across the entire field until I picked up the blocker I needed and saw the opening I had lofted a prayer to heaven for. When that opening came, I streaked for the open field and felt someone dive for me from behind; I tripped but balanced myself with my left hand, kept my feet, and saw the kicker at their thirty-yard line, the last Clemson player with a chance of keeping me out of their end zone.
But there were sixty thousand people who did not know my name and four people I loved whose voices were urging me along in the stadium called Death Valley, and I had no plans to be tackled by a kicker. I lowered my head and my helmet caught him in the numbers and he melted like snow before the goddamn glance of the Lord, flattened by the only boy on that field who knew Byron's name or a single line of his poetry. Two Clemson players caught me at the five and I gave them a free ride as we tumbled into the end zone at the end of the run that would change my life forever.
The score was thirteen-six and there was a quarter of football left to play when I heard those sweet words spoken by the announcer. "The run by number forty-three, Tom Wingo, covered one hundred and three yards and sets a new Atlantic Coast Conference record."
I returned to the sidelines and was engulfed by my teammates and coaches. I went past the bench and stood waving like a madman at the place high in the stands where I knew Sallie and Luke and my parents were on their feet cheering for me.
George Lanier kicked the extra point and we were six points behind the Clemson Tigers when we took the field in the forth quarter.
With two minutes left in the game, we stopped Clemson at their own twenty-yard line. And I heard one of the assistant coaches yell to Coach Bass, "Let Wingo take the punt."
"Wingo," Coach Bass screamed, and I ran up to him.
"Wingo," he said as I adjusted my helmet, "do it again."
I had turned golden that day and Coach Bass had uttered magical, incantatory words and I tried to remember when in my life I had heard that phrase before as I took a position on our thirty-five-yard line, shuttering out the extraordinary noise of the crowd. As I watched the center snap the ball to the punter, I remembered that distant sunset when I was three and my mother had walked us out on the dock and brought the moon spinning out from beneath the trees of our island and my sister cried out in a small ecstatic voice, "Oh, Mama, do it again!"
"Do it again," I said as I watched the spiral tower far above the field begin its long descent into the arms of a boy turned golden for a single day in his life.
As I caught the ball I looked upfield.
I took the first marvelous step of the run that would make me the most famous football player in South Carolina for a year I will cherish as long as I live. I caught the ball on our forty-yard line and raced up the right sideline, but all I could see was a moveable garden of orange heading my way. Three Clemson players were moving in for the tackle from my left side when I stopped dead and began running the other way, back toward our own goal line, trying to make it to the other side of the field. One Clemson lineman caught me at the seventeen but was cut in half by a vicious block by one of our linebackers, Jim Landon. Two of them were matching me stride for stride when I turned upfield. When I looked up the far sidelines, I saw something amazing happening in front of my eyes. Our blocking had broken down completely after the punt, but each of my teammates trailing the play had watched me reverse my field with eleven Clemson players in healthy pursuit. I was looking down a lane of blockers that stretched for fifty yards downfield. A Clemson player would be about to catch me; then I would see a South Carolina player step between me and the tackler and cut him down at the knees. It was like running inside a cannonade. It was a fine life I was leading that day and I felt like the fastest, sweetest, dandiest boy who ever breathed the clean air of Clemson. When I hit their thirty-yard line running faster than I ever thought I could run, there was not a Clemson player left standing on the field. When I crossed the goal line, I fell to my knees and thanked the God who made me swift for the privilege of feeling like a king of the world for one glorious, unrepeatable day of my young life.
After George Lanier made the extra point and we stopped Clemson's drive on our own twenty-three-yard line and the final whistle blew, I thought I would be killed by the rush of Carolina fans onto the field. I would have died in perfect rapture. A photographer caught the exact moment when Sallie found me in the crowd, leapt into my arms, and kissed me on the mouth while screaming at the same time. That picture was on the front page of every sports section in the state the following morning, evenin Pelzer.
At midnight that night, I walked outside Yesterday's restaurant in Five Points where my parents had taken us to dinner and felt diminished when that marvelous day was over.
The following week, bumper stickers appeared on automobiles the length and breadth of South Carolina saying, "Kick it to Wingo, Clemson."
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Murder of Harry Anglemyer
Copper Kettle Fudge
The Murder of Harry Anglemyer – The Fudge King
No one is officially investigating the murder of Harry Anglemyer today, but in the decades since he was killed the case is still a matter of public interest, and people question whether justice will ever be served.
Harry Anglemyer was an Ocean City, New Jersey businessman who was attempting to reform the city’s arcane blue laws when he was killed in the parking lot of the Dunes nightclub in what is now Egg Harbor Township on Labor Day, 1964.
While no one has been convicted of the crime and there is no official interest in pursuing the case, the former Ocean City Director of Public Safety, the former Chief of Police and former and present Ocean City Fire Department personnel have been implicated in the affair.
Until the day after Labor Day 1964, the biggest mystery about Copper Kettle Fudge was the recipe, but then Harry Anglemeyer, the founder of the Jersey Shore fudge empire was found murdered.
The 37 year old “Fudge King,” as he was called, was a successful, albeit controversial figure who owned a chain of fudge shops on the Ocean City and Atlantic City boardwalks and in Avalon and Sea Isle City.
A member of the Ocean City Planning Board and founder of an Ocean City civic association, Anglemyer was controversial, not only for trying to change the Ocean City blue laws, but because of his personal lifestyle, which was flagrantly homosexual.
While it was his stand on the blue laws, which he thought should be stringently enforced or liberalized, that brought him into the public spotlight, it was his gay lifestyle that brought complaints from traditionally conservative citizens who wanted to keep Ocean City from changing, especially opening for business on Sundays.
Over a year before he was killed Anglemeyer was arrested and charged with lewdness by the Cape May Country Prosecutor. According to newspaper reports at the time, “He was accused of improper behavior with three different men….Anglemeyer insisted that he was innocent and announced he would fight the charges.”
The news reports also noted, “The start of the investigation which led up to Anglemyer’s arrest is cloaked in mystery.”
The morals charges stemmed from the events of the night of May 28, 1963 and the early morning hours of May 29, 1963, events that were suspiciously similar to the night that he was murdered over a year later.
Then Ocean City Public Safety Director D. Allen Stretch came forward and announced that he had assigned Ocean City detective Dominic Longo to investigate Anglemyer after he had received numerous phone calls complaining about Anglemyer.
Although neither the mayor, the chief of police nor the city attorney were aware of Longo’s inquiry, Cape May County detective George Doughterty filed charges against both Anglemyer and Longo, noting in the complaint that, “Anglemyer had improper relations with Longo…a charge based on a statement given the prosecutor’s office by Longo himself.”
According to published reports, Longo began his investigation on the night of May 28, 1963 when he “found Anglemyer with friends at a Somers Point bar. Longo joined the party. Later he and Anglemyer paid a brief visit to another Bay Avenue, Somers Point bar, and then headed for a bar on the Somers Point – Longport Blvd., in what is now Egg Harbor Township. According to Anglemyer, he left the bar for a few minutes and returned to find his highball “spiked” with extra liquor. He refused to drink it and requested a new drink from the bartender.”
“Then Longo asked Anglemyer to drive him to Ocean City,” the newspaper reported. “Anglemyer agreed. On the way, according to Anglemyer, Longo said he ought to have a cup of coffee before going home (to 104 4th Steet). He asked Anglemyer to take him to Anglemyer’s summer apartment at 11th Street on the boardwalk (above the Copper Kettle Fudge Shop there), and make some coffee. It is concerning what actually happened at the apartment where the two men disagree.”
Anglemyer, in his formal complaint, said that the detective tried to force him to perform an unnatural sex act, while Longo’s affidavit “claims Anglemyer took the initiative and that Longo submitted.”
After leaving Anglemyer’s apartment, Longo reported to Public Safety Director Stretch, who telephoned then assistant Cape May County Prosecutor William Hughes, who turned the case over to detective George Dougherty.
Dougherty had both Anglemyer and Long arrested under New Jersey State statute 2A:115-1- “Any person who…in private commits an act of lewdness or carnal indecency with another, grossly scandalous and tending to debaunch the morals and manners of the people is guilty of a misdemeanor.” If found guilty the fine was $1,000 and imprisonment for up to three years.
Longo was permitted to stay on the job because, “while alleging he permitted an illegal act on his person by Anglemyer, was on duty at the time and therefore not subject to automatic suspension as required by the Civil Service regulations when a police officer is charged with a misdemeanor.”
Stretch pointed out that Longo was “simply getting the evidence,” and that he “conducted this investigation on my instructions. I assigned him to the case, and directed him to pursue it with vigor.”
Also implicated at the time were former Ocean City policeman ..............., then a laborer on the city payroll, and ................., a bridge attendant.
“The prosecution is based on sworn statements made by Ocean Cit Detective Dominic Longo, .................and ................ The three men alleged that at various times since 1959 they, individually, had improper relations with the defendant.”
The prosecutor said that the three charges would be handled in two cases, with Longo’s tried separate from the charges that concerned .......................
Anglemyer’s stand on the blue laws was not overlooked, as news reports noted, “Whispered assertions that the arrest of Harry Anglemyer, a prominent civic leader,…on three lewdness charges was brought about because of Anglemyer’s leadership in the fight to liberalize Sunday observances.”
But this allegation was branded “silly” by Public Safety Director Stretch, who was quoted as saying, “I have the greatest regard for Captain Longo as a police officer and a man of character.”
Although both Anglemyer and Longo were both initially arrested and charged, when a Grand Jury convened they only returned indictments against Anglemyer.
In April, 1964 the first case came to trial, ending in Anglemyer’s aquital when the jury deliberated for less than 20 minutes in finding him not guilty. The two other charges were pending, and although officials considered dropping the charges as a result of the disposition of the first case, Anglemyer was adamant about seeing them through to clear his name.
Then, early on the morning of Monday, Labor Day 1964, Anglemyer’s body was found in his car parked along the side of the highway outside the Dunes nightclub. One of his employees, Raymound W. Daley, recognized Anglemyer’s car when he passed the scene on the way to deliver fudge to the Atlantic City store.
Anglemyer was slumped dead on the floor of the car, so Daley called the New Jersey State Police. Because the Dunes nightclub was in Egg Harbor Township, which had no police department at the time, the initial investigation was handled by Troop A of the New Jersey State Police out of Hammonton, which was then led by Captain Harry C. Armano. Detective Robert Saunders and James Brennan handled the bulk of the investigation, but were assisted by as many as seven investigators who worked for many weeks developing leads.
An autopsy conducted at Shore Memorial Hospital revealed that Anglemyer had been dead for several hours before he was found and had suffered two skull fractures, one above the left eye and another behind the right ear.
The investigation learned that Anglemyer had been out on the town the night before his death. Early in the evening he had stopped at the Jolly Roger bar on the Somers Point Circle. Two women who knew him said that they sat with him at Steel’s Ship Bar on Bay Avenue, where they listened to music. They said he invited them to join him at the Dunes for a drink, but they declined, although they noteed that he was “stone cold sober,” when he left them. He may have also stopped at the Anchorage Tavern, and a bartender who frequently served him noted that Anglemyer always asked for his drink to be short, as he didn’t want to get drunk.
Anglemyer then went to the Bala Inn, on Bay and Maryland Avenues, where he made reservations for an end-of-the-summer party for his employees. He then stopped down the road at O’Bryne’s, where he had something to eat.
During his bar hopping round Anglemyer mentioned to more than one person that he had an appointment to meet someone at the Dunes that night and expressing his regret that he had to make the meeting.
When he got to the Dunes he sat at the bar with an acquaintance and was quoted as saying, “I wish I hadn’t made an appointment to come here tonight.”
Although he reportedly had at least one drink at each of his four or five stops, those who were with him that night all concurred that while he appeared tired, Anglemyer was not drunk.
While the Somers Point bars had to close by 2 a.m., the Dunes, as it is in Egg Harbor Township, stayed open all night. “Dunes ‘Till Dawn” was the moniker on the T-shirts. Someone noted that while not drunk, Anglemyer appeared very tired, “half asleep at the bar,” and when the person he was suppose to meet didn’t show up by 5:30 a.m. he left, but not by the front door.
Above the regular bar at the Dunes was the SandPiper Club, a second floor, private club for locals that could be reached from an inside flight of stairs as well as a separate side entrance. Anglemyer was still seeking the person he was suppose to meet when he went into the priave, members-only SandPiper Club.
From there, as the newspapers reported, Anglemyer contined his “nocturnal quest, minutes away from his rendezvous with death.”
Evidence at the scene of the crime indicated that he was knocked unconscious and dragged ten or twelve feet to his car. There were coins scattered around the ground, and his platinum wrist watch, wallet and three diamond rings, one valued at $10,000 were missing.
Daniel Le Roy, 46, identified as Anglemyer’s longtime secretary, was quoted as saying his “pockets were stripped of everything but a cigarette lighter and a pocket comb.”
Anglemeyer’s large diamond ring stood out conspicuously, and he was known to carry around large amounts of cash, making him a mark for robbery, and providing an apparent motive.
Three men, one identified as a 22 year old Ocean City “rooming house deadbeat,” and the two others as “beach boys,” were taken in for questioning. The “beach boys” had previously bragged about how easy it would be to “roll” Anglemyer for his ring, which he frequently flashed around while carousing the bars.
Friends and family publicly speculated that Anglemyer was “prey for a wolf pack,” and two other youths were sought for questioning because they had boasted they had “rolled” Anglemyer, beat and kicked him and stole $90, but he had refused to surrender the ring despite threats against him. A passing delivery truck driver was said to have broken up the fight, but the thieves escaped.
Then two witnesses came forward, a young couple who said they were sitting in a parked car outside the Dunes “making out.” As they were parked in a car along the road behind Anglemyer’s car, they saw Anglemyer talking with another man in a suit and tie. They heard the men arguing before the man hit Anglemyer, who fell to the ground, apparently hitting his head on a slab of concrete.
The witnesses said that as the man in the suit and tie walked away, two other men appeared and dragged the limp Anglemyer to his car where they placed him in the front seat. These men were called “the good Samaritans” in the newspapers and were asked to come forward and give statements, but no one did.
Because the strangers would not recognize Anglemyer’s car, and they were most likely the ones who took the watch, wallet and rings, these two men were also considered as possible accomplices to the murder.
A composite drawing was then made of the suspected murderer, which was published in the newspapers, and a “statewide manhunt” was undertaken for a white male between 25 and 30 years of age, medium build, five foot ten to six feet tall, who wore a dark suite, light shirt and dark tie.
A break in the case came in 1969 when it was reported tat the largest of Anglemyer’s rings was located out of state, which brought the FBI into the case.
Then 27 year old Christopher Brendan Hughes was charged with the murder. Hughes had previously been arrested in Philadelphia in October, 1966, allegedly part of an “interstate extortion ring preying on homosexuals.” Although the first court session ended in a mistrial because of information published in the newspaper, another trial was scheduled.
The trial, which took place in a Mays Landing court room in September, 1969, included the testimony of the original witnesses, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth W. McGinley, who had married since the murder. They testified they were sitting n a car directly behind Anglemyer’s car, when the altercation occurred, but when asked if she recognized the murderer in the court room, Mrs. McGinley pointed to a law enforcement officer rather than the suspect.
Then, at the last moment, the state’s star witness, Ronnie Lee Murray, a 30 year old black man, who served time in prison with Hughes, was suppose to testify that Hughes confessed to having committed the crime and related details of the murder to him while they were incarcerated in the same jail cell together. But when it came time to testify, Murray declined, and Hughes was found not guilty.
The last note on the public record quoted an anonymous law enforcement official as saying, “Unless an entirely new suspect or suspects turns up, law enforcement authorities regard the murder case as closed.”
None of the three jurisdictions – Egg Harbor Township police, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office nor the New Jersey State Police claim to have the files on the case, and no one is officially investigating the murder at this time. There are some indications that the official files related to the murder are currently in the possession of the Ocean City Police Department.
But now, over thirty years later, a new witness has come forward, and identified possible suspects in the murder.
While he wishes to remain anonymous, the witness was a former Ocean City municipal employee who was working as a delivery man in early September, 1964. On Monday, Labor Day, he said that in the early morning hours he had pulled his truck off to the side of the Somers Point – Ocean City causeway. While checking his inventory and delivery list, he noticed a vehicle parked down a dirt road that ran to the water, an old boat ramp.
There were three men standing around the vehicle arguing, talking loud enough for him to hear some of what they were saying. One of the men, in an Ocean City high school football jersey, ripped off his shirt, which appeared to be smeared with blood, rolled it up and threw it in the water.
As they left the delivery man recognized the three individuals as local guys he knew from school.
The next day, after news of the murder was out, one of the three men approached the delivery man and threatened him if he talked about what he witnessed the day before.
The delivery man said that he remained silent about the incident for many years, but is now talking about it because he is fearful for his life.
The delivery man identified one of the three men as a local man who retired from the Fire Department after being injured in the line of duty. A second individual, possibly a bouncer at the Dunes, is now dead, having passed away in Flordia, while the third individual is a relative of an Ocean City policeman who became Chief of Police after Dominic Longo.
Dominic Longo, after serving for many years as Chief of Police, became Director of Public Safety, which oversees the Police and Fire Departments. He has since passed away.
The delivery man has died too, but the relative of the former Chief of Police, who was identified as being one of the three men who disposed of the bloody shirt, is still alive, and while justice can never be served, he could answer the questions as to what really happened to Harry Anglemyer, and why he died.
xxxx
Monday, September 21, 2009
Duke Mack RIP
DOMINICK "DUKE" MACK
MACK, DOMINICK "DUKE" 79 - founder of Mack's Pizza, passed away at his home surrounded by his family on Friday, September 18th.
Duke was a unique individual; one of a kind, a lover of life and fun, but at the same time a serious businessman and a warm and loving person devoted to family and friends. After operating a restaurant in Trenton on Nottingham Way (near the Trenton Fairgrounds), Duke, along with his father Anthony, took a drive to Wildwood and that's where the first Mack's Pizza was born.
They were the original founders of Mack's Pizza in Wildwood, as well as being the "Mack" in Mack and Manco's Pizza in Ocean City.
Duke's other businesses included a nightclub/restaurant named after him in AC, Duke Mack's, Hamilton Bowling Lanes in Hamilton Township and even Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.
Duke was a huge NY Yankee supporter and a fan of Joe DiMaggio "the grea Yankee of them all." Duke had a great sense of humor and was a constant source of strength for his family and friends. Under his tough exterior, he had a heart of gold. Predeceased by his brother, Vince Mack and his first wife, Charlotte; Duke is survived by his wife Pat, two sons and a daughter-in-law, Ronald Mack and Darryl and Mary Mack; grandchildren, Eoin and Laura; Pat's daughter, Maryanne, who Duke loved and thought of as his own, her husband Michael and grandchildren, Brittany and Nicky Ziccardi. Duke is also survived by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Sharon Mack; and his sister Catherine Moloney.
A funeral service will begin 10am Wednesday at the Saul Colonial Home, 3795 Nottingham Way, Hamilton Square. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11am Wednesday at the Holy Angels RC Church, 1733 South Broad Street, Trenton, NJ 08610. Interment will follow in St. Mary's Cemetery, Hamilton, NJ. Relatives and friends may call 8-10am Wednesday at the Colonial Home.
Memorial contributions may be made to Holy Redeemer Health System, Development Department (Hospice Program), 21 Moredon Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 or the Prostate Cancer Foundation, 1250 Fourth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401. www.saulfuneralhomes.com
MACK, DOMINICK "DUKE" 79 - founder of Mack's Pizza, passed away at his home surrounded by his family on Friday, September 18th.
Duke was a unique individual; one of a kind, a lover of life and fun, but at the same time a serious businessman and a warm and loving person devoted to family and friends. After operating a restaurant in Trenton on Nottingham Way (near the Trenton Fairgrounds), Duke, along with his father Anthony, took a drive to Wildwood and that's where the first Mack's Pizza was born.
They were the original founders of Mack's Pizza in Wildwood, as well as being the "Mack" in Mack and Manco's Pizza in Ocean City.
Duke's other businesses included a nightclub/restaurant named after him in AC, Duke Mack's, Hamilton Bowling Lanes in Hamilton Township and even Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer.
Duke was a huge NY Yankee supporter and a fan of Joe DiMaggio "the grea Yankee of them all." Duke had a great sense of humor and was a constant source of strength for his family and friends. Under his tough exterior, he had a heart of gold. Predeceased by his brother, Vince Mack and his first wife, Charlotte; Duke is survived by his wife Pat, two sons and a daughter-in-law, Ronald Mack and Darryl and Mary Mack; grandchildren, Eoin and Laura; Pat's daughter, Maryanne, who Duke loved and thought of as his own, her husband Michael and grandchildren, Brittany and Nicky Ziccardi. Duke is also survived by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Joseph and Sharon Mack; and his sister Catherine Moloney.
A funeral service will begin 10am Wednesday at the Saul Colonial Home, 3795 Nottingham Way, Hamilton Square. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11am Wednesday at the Holy Angels RC Church, 1733 South Broad Street, Trenton, NJ 08610. Interment will follow in St. Mary's Cemetery, Hamilton, NJ. Relatives and friends may call 8-10am Wednesday at the Colonial Home.
Memorial contributions may be made to Holy Redeemer Health System, Development Department (Hospice Program), 21 Moredon Road, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006 or the Prostate Cancer Foundation, 1250 Fourth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401. www.saulfuneralhomes.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
The Secretary who Changed the World
The Secretary who Changed the World
& The Legend of Woodstock before the Festival.
The legend and the legacy was set before the festival was envisioned.
It's hard to say exactly where to begin, New York, Somers Point, Montreal, the Woodstock myth began in the Manhattan office of Albert Grossman, the entertainment manager whose stable of acts included one Bob Dylan, folk singer extradonaire on the rise.
Dylan had come in to the office excited recently, and made Grossman sit down and listen to this - "Once upon a time you dressed so fine, didn't you......?"
They knew "Like A Rolling Stone" was a hit right off the bat, without even having to test it on somebody else's ears.
The Byrds had taken Dylan's folkie "Mr. Tamborine Man" and made it a rock and roll song with drums and electric guitars, and now with "Like A Rolling Stone," Dylan was writing rock & roll, and you could sense the direction he was going, and it wasn't to Woodstock.
As the legend goes, Dylan asked Grossman, his manager, about getting a rock and roll band to back him on his next tour, and who would Grossman recommend.
I don't know if they asked her opinion, or if she overheard the question and volunteered her feelings, but being from a small town in Canada, she knew that the Hawk were the best rock & roll band she had ever seen.
Rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins had left the band, and they continued on the road under the name of Levon & the Hawks, after drummer Levon Helm, from Arkansas, the only American in the Canadian band who had toured with Hawkins for years.
Grossman asked where the Hawks were playing and found out that their manager, Colonel Kutlets, had booked them into a nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey - Tony Marts.
Without ever having seen or heard of them, and based totally on this unknown secretary's opinion, Dylan got the phone number for Tony Marts and gave them a call.
Levon had never heard of Bob Dylan, and when Dylan asked them to back him at Carnege Hall, Levon asked who else was on the bill.
"Just us," Dylan said, incredulously.
So Levon and the Hawks went up to New York and met with Dylan and Grossman and agreed they would get out of their contract at Tony Marts and back Dylan at Forest Hills, a tennis stadium just outside New York city.
Although Anthony Marotta, aka Tony Mart, didn't like the idea of the "best rock and roll band on the East Coast" breaking their contract and leaving before the Labor Day weekend, he let them off the hook, gave them a cake and fairwell party and wished them luck. He called Colonel Kutlets and asked for a new band to replace the Hawks and Kutlets sent Tony a new band, the Detroit Wheels, who had a hit, "Devil With the Blue Dress."
But luck the Hawks didn't have.
When Dylan plugged his guitar in at Forest Hills, the old folkies booed him, but he played on.
Levon really didn't like it however, and after a few gigs he left and went back home to Arkansas.
Then Dylan was in a motorcycle accident, and rumors were he died, or was on life support, and then that he was okay but just really banged up and in seclusion while recouperating.
Word eventually filtered out that Dylan was recouperating at Al Grossman's house at Woodstock, New York, an historic artists community with a history that dates back to the turn of the last century.
Joining Dylan at Woodstock were some of the Hawks, who leased a pink duplex in nearby West Saguarties, and jammed in the basement. Around town they became known simply as "the band," and eventually adopted that name. Their first album, "Music From Big Pink," showed the Big Pink house on the cover, and featured a painting by Bob Dylan on the back. A few of the songs were written by Dylan as well.
Then came bootleg recordings, pressed into bootleg LPs with a plane white cover, known as "The Basement Tapes," ostensibly recorded in the basement of Big Pink, and featuring Dylan, not only singing old and new songs, but talking and telling jokes.
The one joke from the original Basement Tapes I remember, that didn't make it to the official release years (decades?) later, is the story of the Checkmate Coffee House of East Orange, New Jersey.
Dylan says he went there once, and paid for his coffee with chess piece, a rook, and got a knight and pawn for change. Or something like that.
But "Music from Big Pink" and "The Basement Tapes" put Woodstock on the map in the back of a lot of people's minds, a year or so before they began to put the festival together.
And after the festival was moved to Bethel, fifty miles from Woodstock, and The Band performed the festival, both the original town of Woodstock and The Band, got left in the festival's wake.
For some reason, and I think Grossman advised The Band not to permit it, but The Band is conspiciously absent from the Woodstock movie and soundtrack, which is not an accident. I don't think they, The Band, at Grossman's advise, permitted them to use them in the Woodstock film, just as The Band's version of "The Weight" is not used in the Easy Rider film or soundtrack, but a cover band's version. And I think that decision was Grossman's.
Around 1986, after seeing the Band and the Band minus Robbie Robertson, and Danko and Manuel together a few times, I helped arrange for the Band to return to Somers Point for a Tony Marts reunion at Egos, the new disco nightclub that was built on the Tony Mart site.
After we booked the Band, but about six weeks before the show, Albert Grossman, Tony Marotta and Richard Manuel all died within a few days of each other.
The show however, went on. And while they were in town, I got to know Rick Danko, Levon and Garth Hudson a little bit on the personal level.
While Rick passed on a few years ago (after playing the Good Old Days Picnic at Kennedy Park), both Levon and Garth returned to Woodstock and live there today.
The Woodstock museum and arts center is not in Woodstock however, but in Bethel, where the festival was held.
There is no doubt however, that rock & roll history was made when Bob Dylan joined forces with the Hawks - electrified Forest Hills and the music scene, and then hibernated at Woodstock, establishing the Woodstock legend years before the festival.
And it only happened because Albert Grossman's secretary knew the answer to the question of who was the best rock & roll band on the East Coast.
Why that would be the Hawks.
& The Legend of Woodstock before the Festival.
The legend and the legacy was set before the festival was envisioned.
It's hard to say exactly where to begin, New York, Somers Point, Montreal, the Woodstock myth began in the Manhattan office of Albert Grossman, the entertainment manager whose stable of acts included one Bob Dylan, folk singer extradonaire on the rise.
Dylan had come in to the office excited recently, and made Grossman sit down and listen to this - "Once upon a time you dressed so fine, didn't you......?"
They knew "Like A Rolling Stone" was a hit right off the bat, without even having to test it on somebody else's ears.
The Byrds had taken Dylan's folkie "Mr. Tamborine Man" and made it a rock and roll song with drums and electric guitars, and now with "Like A Rolling Stone," Dylan was writing rock & roll, and you could sense the direction he was going, and it wasn't to Woodstock.
As the legend goes, Dylan asked Grossman, his manager, about getting a rock and roll band to back him on his next tour, and who would Grossman recommend.
I don't know if they asked her opinion, or if she overheard the question and volunteered her feelings, but being from a small town in Canada, she knew that the Hawk were the best rock & roll band she had ever seen.
Rockabilly Ronnie Hawkins had left the band, and they continued on the road under the name of Levon & the Hawks, after drummer Levon Helm, from Arkansas, the only American in the Canadian band who had toured with Hawkins for years.
Grossman asked where the Hawks were playing and found out that their manager, Colonel Kutlets, had booked them into a nightclub in Somers Point, New Jersey - Tony Marts.
Without ever having seen or heard of them, and based totally on this unknown secretary's opinion, Dylan got the phone number for Tony Marts and gave them a call.
Levon had never heard of Bob Dylan, and when Dylan asked them to back him at Carnege Hall, Levon asked who else was on the bill.
"Just us," Dylan said, incredulously.
So Levon and the Hawks went up to New York and met with Dylan and Grossman and agreed they would get out of their contract at Tony Marts and back Dylan at Forest Hills, a tennis stadium just outside New York city.
Although Anthony Marotta, aka Tony Mart, didn't like the idea of the "best rock and roll band on the East Coast" breaking their contract and leaving before the Labor Day weekend, he let them off the hook, gave them a cake and fairwell party and wished them luck. He called Colonel Kutlets and asked for a new band to replace the Hawks and Kutlets sent Tony a new band, the Detroit Wheels, who had a hit, "Devil With the Blue Dress."
But luck the Hawks didn't have.
When Dylan plugged his guitar in at Forest Hills, the old folkies booed him, but he played on.
Levon really didn't like it however, and after a few gigs he left and went back home to Arkansas.
Then Dylan was in a motorcycle accident, and rumors were he died, or was on life support, and then that he was okay but just really banged up and in seclusion while recouperating.
Word eventually filtered out that Dylan was recouperating at Al Grossman's house at Woodstock, New York, an historic artists community with a history that dates back to the turn of the last century.
Joining Dylan at Woodstock were some of the Hawks, who leased a pink duplex in nearby West Saguarties, and jammed in the basement. Around town they became known simply as "the band," and eventually adopted that name. Their first album, "Music From Big Pink," showed the Big Pink house on the cover, and featured a painting by Bob Dylan on the back. A few of the songs were written by Dylan as well.
Then came bootleg recordings, pressed into bootleg LPs with a plane white cover, known as "The Basement Tapes," ostensibly recorded in the basement of Big Pink, and featuring Dylan, not only singing old and new songs, but talking and telling jokes.
The one joke from the original Basement Tapes I remember, that didn't make it to the official release years (decades?) later, is the story of the Checkmate Coffee House of East Orange, New Jersey.
Dylan says he went there once, and paid for his coffee with chess piece, a rook, and got a knight and pawn for change. Or something like that.
But "Music from Big Pink" and "The Basement Tapes" put Woodstock on the map in the back of a lot of people's minds, a year or so before they began to put the festival together.
And after the festival was moved to Bethel, fifty miles from Woodstock, and The Band performed the festival, both the original town of Woodstock and The Band, got left in the festival's wake.
For some reason, and I think Grossman advised The Band not to permit it, but The Band is conspiciously absent from the Woodstock movie and soundtrack, which is not an accident. I don't think they, The Band, at Grossman's advise, permitted them to use them in the Woodstock film, just as The Band's version of "The Weight" is not used in the Easy Rider film or soundtrack, but a cover band's version. And I think that decision was Grossman's.
Around 1986, after seeing the Band and the Band minus Robbie Robertson, and Danko and Manuel together a few times, I helped arrange for the Band to return to Somers Point for a Tony Marts reunion at Egos, the new disco nightclub that was built on the Tony Mart site.
After we booked the Band, but about six weeks before the show, Albert Grossman, Tony Marotta and Richard Manuel all died within a few days of each other.
The show however, went on. And while they were in town, I got to know Rick Danko, Levon and Garth Hudson a little bit on the personal level.
While Rick passed on a few years ago (after playing the Good Old Days Picnic at Kennedy Park), both Levon and Garth returned to Woodstock and live there today.
The Woodstock museum and arts center is not in Woodstock however, but in Bethel, where the festival was held.
There is no doubt however, that rock & roll history was made when Bob Dylan joined forces with the Hawks - electrified Forest Hills and the music scene, and then hibernated at Woodstock, establishing the Woodstock legend years before the festival.
And it only happened because Albert Grossman's secretary knew the answer to the question of who was the best rock & roll band on the East Coast.
Why that would be the Hawks.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
From Ocean City to Woodstock
From Ocean City to Woodstock
Okay, it's been 40 years, I know, know, and it's always going to be there - a generational milestone against which other major events are measured.
And I did this twenty years ago, when I thought it was a passing fad, and I can't find that clip so I'm going entirely on memory here, but I will do the best I can, spurred on by nudging from my pal Jerry Montgomery, who was inspired to blog his own recollections.
Blog wasn't a word in the dictionary in August, 1969, and the multi-media networks are a major development since the last Woodstock anniversary worth noting.
Just perusing the internet world I quickly realize that others are doing the same thing, and my recollections don't seem to jive totally with what is out there.
For instance, there's the Santana bit about their first album not being out in August, 1969, and that it wasn't released until after they played Woodstock.
Well, that's not the way I remember it.
I remember very distinctly being in a Wildwood motel room with Jerry and Marc Jordan, another good buddy from high school days, and one of them turning me on to Santana, playing what I thought was Black Magic Women, but since that song is not on their first album, it must have been Persuasion, or one of the smooth, thundering Santana songs, putting it on the record player while handing me the album cover, saying, "And Santana is going to be there!. We really got to go to Woodstock."
I knew about Woodstock, having previously had a epiphany like experience the first time I heard the Band's "The Weight" on the radio sometime in 1968. I was living at 362 (Garden Avenue, Camden, N.J.) at the time, and it was a Sunday night, but I don't remember if the dj was Meatball Fulton on the Penn station or Dave Herman on WMMR, where Herman introduced AOR - Album Oriented Rock and changed the world.
Fulton was further out there in Left Field, playing Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica), so it was probably Dave Herman who played "The Weight," - "take a load off Mammy," you know the song that changed the world, at least for me.
At least it got my attention, and even though this was years before I even learned the Band had been down the Shore at Tony Marts in Somers Point while I was hanging out in Ocean City, but I did know that they had backed Bob Dylan at the historic Forest Hills gig where the folkies booed him for "going electric," and that since Dylan had been in a bad motor cycle accident, their tour together had been postponed and they were all laid back recouperating at a place called Woodstock.
It was an old time, turn of the last century Artist Colony in Mid-state New York, where Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had a home and recording studio. Dylan was holed up at Grossman's house in a cast, while the rest of the Band lived in a pink split level house they called Big Pink in nearby West Saugerties. It was in the basement of Big Pink that they recorded the "Basement Tapes," many of the cuts featuring Dylan. So he was alive! And at Woodstock! This was the legend before the festival was envisioned.
When Jerry and Marc were telling me that Santana was going to be at a rock concert at Woodstock, all I could think of was Dylan and the Band.
And the Band were in the lineup for the festival at Woodstock, Marc said convincingly.
We had all went to high school together - Camden Catholic High School, class of '69, and has spent the previous few years at my family rooming house in Ocean City, but this summer Jerry and Marc were working at a grill on the Wildwood boardwalk and living at the motel a few blocks away.
The TV was on with the sound down, Santana was on the record player, and Jerry and Marc were trying to convince me to go to Woodstock with them for this rock festival.
But I had a real, steady job, flipping pizza on the Ocean City boardwalk, and I couldn't just take off a weekend in the middle of the summer.
Then I got a letter in the mail from the University of Dayton (Ohio), where I was due to enroll as a freshman in September, but this letter said that I was to show up for "Freshman Orientation" the same weekend as Woodstock.
So I showed the letter to my boss, Mr. Anthony Mack, who was then in his seventies, and didn't read anyway, so the letter could have said anything, but I was honest with him about the letter, and he said that I had to go, that my education was more important, but make sure I was back for the following weekend - Labor Day, the busiest weekend of the season. I'd be back on Monday I promised.
Then one day, while I was working, Jerry and Marc started talking with a guy with a napsack who was hanging around Shriver's Pier at 9th street and the boardwalk(no longer there), where all the hippies hung out and played guitar and sang. He was in town to visit his sister, who was working at Cooper Kettle Fudge on the boardwalk, and didn't have a place to stay.
No problem. "Our friend has a house down the street and lets everybody stay there."
When I got done making pizza the four of us went to the 9th Street diner (no longer there) for something to eat, and I learned that Jerry and Marc's new friend Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, was also going to be a freshman at the University of Dayton. He too was going to skip "freshman orientation" and go to Woodstock, so we all agreed we were going, and we made plans on meeting up with Mark Connally there. (Ha ha, but little did we know).
Thursday night, after I closed the pizza place, I hurried home, a few blocks away, and Marc and Jerry and Bob Katchnick, another friend from high school, were there, all packed and ready to go. My 1959' CJ5 jeep with no doors was packed with blankets and camping junk, was parked in the alley, but it was damp and wouldn't start.
My mother came out to say goodbye to us, and when we told her the jeep wouldn't start, she said to "take your father's car."
That's what she said, and we didn't argue.
And we were off, in Dad's relatively new 1967 Ford, a square box car, but since my father was a policeman, it had a sign "County Detective" on the visor, which came in handy when we had to pass people and get past roadblocks.
Jerry says he was driving, and I know I crawled in the back seat and went to sleep, but it wasn't long before we were parked on the side of the road and there was a flashlight in my face from the window. It was a cop, and he was asking me, "Does your father know you have this car?"
Before I could answer, he asked another question.
"Are you going to Woodstock?"
"Yes," was the answer, and it must have been the right one, because he let us go with a simple, "Be safe."
By morning, a few hours later, we were getting really close, because we weren't moving very fast as traffic was getting tight.
As everyone who was there knows, the Woodstock festival was not held at Woodstock, the Arts Colony town where Albert Grossman had his home and recording studio (Bearsville?), and Dylan and the Band were holding up.
The festival, due to the concerns and protests of the local community, was not to be held at Woodstock, but at Max Yasker's farm about fifty miles further down the road.
At some point we picked up a hitch hiker, a fortunious move, as Jerry recalls in his blog -[http://users.section101.com/?page=user_blog&room=jerrymontgomery] because the guy had already been to the site and knew a back way in, down a dirt road and through some fields that emptied out right back stage, maybe two hundred yards to the right rear of the stage.
It wasn't long however, before we were blocked in and parked there for a few days.
It was damp when we left, and wet when we got there, but it only rained periodically, but when it rained, it rained.
Jerry remembers some acid being consumed by some, but not me. I didn't drink alochol or even smoke pot, and may have been the only straight and sober person there.
We did have a leather gourd with some wine that we shared, but for the most part, I didn't partake and should have a clear recollection of everything that happened.
I don't.
I do remember scouting out the scene, walking around amazed at everything, and eventually working my way down in front of the stage where I sat with some strangers, who became my friends, and listened to Richie Havens, who I remember the clearest.
Joan Biez also stands out as someone I actually paid attention to, but some of the bands just didn't interest me - like the Who. I just didn't get it.
After seeing Richie Havens and Joan Biez from pretty close up, I went for a walk around the outskirts of the scene, a big mistake because I never got down close to the front of the stage again.
I remember the food court shelling out all kinds of food, and the port a potties, and swimming naked in the lake with a bunch of strangers, actually just to get clean after a rain storm.
There was the medical facilities, that looked like a MASH tent, and there were helicopters constantly flying in and out and buzzing around above us.
Every once in awhile I went back to the car to see if any of the other guys had checked in, but usually nobody was there, until it got dark and we slept in the car, which at least was dry.
I knew my companions for a few years, having me them at Camden Catholic High School. Jerry lived near me in East Camden, is quiet but has a good sense of humor.
Marc was more serious, a transfer to CCHS from arch rival Bishop Eustice, which was an all guy prep school and basketball powerhouse at the time. Marc had played basketball, but was also pretty smart, and for some reason, transferred to Catholic and didn't play basket ball. He drifted towards me and my locker because I was a radical, politically, a "clean for Gene" anti-Vietnam war activist.
Bob Katchnick, which is spelled phonetically, was a real handsome - Troy Donahue like artist, who has a younger hippie sister, and was good friends with Bob Lodge, another artist - the Two Bobs.
Jerry and Marc were hanging out together and close to the wine gourd, while Bob took off on his own, and was probably doing extra-psychadelic enhancers, and of us all, was probably enjoying himself the most.
I know Mark wanted to leave almost as soon as we got there, or at least go get a motel room somewhere, but we were stuck now, in the middle of a half-million people.
That's more than Napoleon's army, and more people than some countries (Monaco, Lichenstein, and the UAE country that's been named to host the next America's Cup).
Finally The Band came on, the one group that I really came to Woodstock to see, and I couldn't get down close to the stage, but I got as I could to the stage left, and when I still couldn't see, I climbed a tree and laid back on one of the limbs with people walking along a trail below me.
While we never did hook up with Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, I thought it was quite unbelievable when, after awhile, I heard Jerry's distinct voice calling out my name. "Yo! Bill."
And I think I frightened him a little when I answered him from above, hanging on to a tree limb.
I saw the Band and heard them, and now I thought the whole trip was worth it.
But Dylan was nowhere to be seen, on or off stage, and I don't think I was the only one disapointed at that.
By Sunday afternoon, there were still a dozen acts to play, but we were pretty much set on getting out of there as soon as the car could be moved and there was traffic moving.
Mark was anxious to go and it didn't take too much convincing me to get going while the gettin' was good.
Bob Katchnick didn't want to leave though, because some of the best acts were still to come, so he said not to worry and that he'd hitch hike home and see us in a few days. And we didn't argue with him.
We left Sunday afternoon so we missed the Sunday night acts and, of course, Hendrix on Monday morning, but I'm sure Bob Katchnick was there, and I later learned from Mark Connally that he hung around and helped clean up the mess.
I don't remember the ride home at all, but when we got home, I do remember that I never saw my father so happy to see me, and his car, though we were both covered in mud. We didn't realize that the festival had made the national news, or the news at all, until we got home and it was only then that we realized what a big thing it was.
I'm going to have to blend Jerry's Blog narrative with this, to see how it jives, but he's told me that he remembers us getting back to Ocean City late Sunday night, and while Mark jumped in the shower, we walked down the alley and around the corner to the Purple Dragon Coffee House on 8th street (now the Horse Horse Ice Cream Parlor), just to show off our Woodstock mud.
If so, that was the only time I bragged about being at Woodstock, because the next day I had to be back at work at Mack & Manco's Pizza on the boardwalk, where I had to tell everybody that I spent the weekend in Dayton, Ohio at "freshmen orientation."
I would have gotten fired for sure if I told them I had actually been to Woodstock.
When I finally got to Dayton, I hooked up with Mark Connally and we became good friends, and eventually moved into an off campus apartment together.
A year or so after Woodstock, Richie Havens came to Dayton and played a concert at the Dayton Arena. I had seats right down front, and after the show I handed Richie a piece of paper that just said something like "Friend Bill Kelly from Woodstock" and the address of a party.
An hour or so after the concert, the party was going pretty strong, with people in every room, but I was hanging out in the kitchen, when a limo pulled up out front, and Richie Havens got out and asked for me, and joined us in the kitchen. The other party guests didn't believe me when I said Richie Havens was coming by, and I was pretty shocked to see him myself, but he came in and pretended he remembered me from Woodstock, and then proceeded to show us how to roll a joint with one hand, just like the cowboys do when they're riding a horse on the range.
By then I was smoking, and drinking draft beer, and we had a grand old time. Richie is still on the road, playing all the time, and when he's not on the road, he lives somewhere in North Jersey. Havens was interviewed on CNN a few nights ago (it should be on YouTube by now), along with Dick Cavatt, who had interviewed Joni Mitchell and Hendrix, both complete interviews also available. The interviewer kept asking Richie Havens these long questions, and Richie, being stoned, answered real slow in few sylables.
As for my Woodstock friends, Jerry is now a computer guy in the mid-west, while Mark is a lawyer in DC, whose married to a lawyer. After Woodstock, Mark got a scholarship to NYU in NYC, and lived in the Village where I visited him a few times. While there he too had an epiphany, joined ROTC and became a USMC officer after graduation. We stayed friends.
We left Bob Katchnick at Woodstock, and I was going to say that we haven't heard from him since, but now I do remember hitich hiking with a girlfriend from Dayton to Detroit and visiting Bob at Wayne State University. I'd like to find out what became of Bob, and get his Woodstock reminisces but I can't seem to get a correct spelling for his last name.
I really became a Band fan, and caught them performing in Cleveland at the Armory there in 1970, and then in Philly at the Spectrum many times, including tours backing Dylan.
One of the first articles I ever had published (Atlantic City Sun) was the story of how the Band, as Levon & the Hawks, played the summer of '65 at Tony Marts nightclub in Somers Point, where they were playing when Dylan convinced them to leave there to back him at Forest Hills.
Then in 1986 we brought The Band back to Somers Point for the first Tony Marts reunion at the original site of Tony Marts, Egos nightclub.
Tony's son Carmen Marotta, opened a nightclub in New Orleans in partnership with the Band's drummer and vocalist Levon Helm - the Classic American Cafe. Later, Levon and his band from Woodstock, including his daughter, played the Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point (no longer there) a few times. The last time he played there he was sick, and couldn't sing, but since then, he's beaten the cancer and can now play drums and sing like the good old days. His last album "Dirt Farmer" won a Grammy and he's going to be playing the Borgatta Casino in Atlantic City (August 22) with the Black Crows, who recently recorded a live album at Levon's barn at Woodstock.
In all the Woodstock reminisces I've read over the past week, I haven't seen anything about Dylan, The Band, Albert Grossman, Big Pink or any of the reasons I went to Woodstock in the first place.
So I guess that gives me the opportunity to set the record straight, if I could only remember.
Bill Kelly
August 16, 2009
Browns Mills, NJ
MORE TO COME
Okay, it's been 40 years, I know, know, and it's always going to be there - a generational milestone against which other major events are measured.
And I did this twenty years ago, when I thought it was a passing fad, and I can't find that clip so I'm going entirely on memory here, but I will do the best I can, spurred on by nudging from my pal Jerry Montgomery, who was inspired to blog his own recollections.
Blog wasn't a word in the dictionary in August, 1969, and the multi-media networks are a major development since the last Woodstock anniversary worth noting.
Just perusing the internet world I quickly realize that others are doing the same thing, and my recollections don't seem to jive totally with what is out there.
For instance, there's the Santana bit about their first album not being out in August, 1969, and that it wasn't released until after they played Woodstock.
Well, that's not the way I remember it.
I remember very distinctly being in a Wildwood motel room with Jerry and Marc Jordan, another good buddy from high school days, and one of them turning me on to Santana, playing what I thought was Black Magic Women, but since that song is not on their first album, it must have been Persuasion, or one of the smooth, thundering Santana songs, putting it on the record player while handing me the album cover, saying, "And Santana is going to be there!. We really got to go to Woodstock."
I knew about Woodstock, having previously had a epiphany like experience the first time I heard the Band's "The Weight" on the radio sometime in 1968. I was living at 362 (Garden Avenue, Camden, N.J.) at the time, and it was a Sunday night, but I don't remember if the dj was Meatball Fulton on the Penn station or Dave Herman on WMMR, where Herman introduced AOR - Album Oriented Rock and changed the world.
Fulton was further out there in Left Field, playing Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (Trout Mask Replica), so it was probably Dave Herman who played "The Weight," - "take a load off Mammy," you know the song that changed the world, at least for me.
At least it got my attention, and even though this was years before I even learned the Band had been down the Shore at Tony Marts in Somers Point while I was hanging out in Ocean City, but I did know that they had backed Bob Dylan at the historic Forest Hills gig where the folkies booed him for "going electric," and that since Dylan had been in a bad motor cycle accident, their tour together had been postponed and they were all laid back recouperating at a place called Woodstock.
It was an old time, turn of the last century Artist Colony in Mid-state New York, where Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had a home and recording studio. Dylan was holed up at Grossman's house in a cast, while the rest of the Band lived in a pink split level house they called Big Pink in nearby West Saugerties. It was in the basement of Big Pink that they recorded the "Basement Tapes," many of the cuts featuring Dylan. So he was alive! And at Woodstock! This was the legend before the festival was envisioned.
When Jerry and Marc were telling me that Santana was going to be at a rock concert at Woodstock, all I could think of was Dylan and the Band.
And the Band were in the lineup for the festival at Woodstock, Marc said convincingly.
We had all went to high school together - Camden Catholic High School, class of '69, and has spent the previous few years at my family rooming house in Ocean City, but this summer Jerry and Marc were working at a grill on the Wildwood boardwalk and living at the motel a few blocks away.
The TV was on with the sound down, Santana was on the record player, and Jerry and Marc were trying to convince me to go to Woodstock with them for this rock festival.
But I had a real, steady job, flipping pizza on the Ocean City boardwalk, and I couldn't just take off a weekend in the middle of the summer.
Then I got a letter in the mail from the University of Dayton (Ohio), where I was due to enroll as a freshman in September, but this letter said that I was to show up for "Freshman Orientation" the same weekend as Woodstock.
So I showed the letter to my boss, Mr. Anthony Mack, who was then in his seventies, and didn't read anyway, so the letter could have said anything, but I was honest with him about the letter, and he said that I had to go, that my education was more important, but make sure I was back for the following weekend - Labor Day, the busiest weekend of the season. I'd be back on Monday I promised.
Then one day, while I was working, Jerry and Marc started talking with a guy with a napsack who was hanging around Shriver's Pier at 9th street and the boardwalk(no longer there), where all the hippies hung out and played guitar and sang. He was in town to visit his sister, who was working at Cooper Kettle Fudge on the boardwalk, and didn't have a place to stay.
No problem. "Our friend has a house down the street and lets everybody stay there."
When I got done making pizza the four of us went to the 9th Street diner (no longer there) for something to eat, and I learned that Jerry and Marc's new friend Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, was also going to be a freshman at the University of Dayton. He too was going to skip "freshman orientation" and go to Woodstock, so we all agreed we were going, and we made plans on meeting up with Mark Connally there. (Ha ha, but little did we know).
Thursday night, after I closed the pizza place, I hurried home, a few blocks away, and Marc and Jerry and Bob Katchnick, another friend from high school, were there, all packed and ready to go. My 1959' CJ5 jeep with no doors was packed with blankets and camping junk, was parked in the alley, but it was damp and wouldn't start.
My mother came out to say goodbye to us, and when we told her the jeep wouldn't start, she said to "take your father's car."
That's what she said, and we didn't argue.
And we were off, in Dad's relatively new 1967 Ford, a square box car, but since my father was a policeman, it had a sign "County Detective" on the visor, which came in handy when we had to pass people and get past roadblocks.
Jerry says he was driving, and I know I crawled in the back seat and went to sleep, but it wasn't long before we were parked on the side of the road and there was a flashlight in my face from the window. It was a cop, and he was asking me, "Does your father know you have this car?"
Before I could answer, he asked another question.
"Are you going to Woodstock?"
"Yes," was the answer, and it must have been the right one, because he let us go with a simple, "Be safe."
By morning, a few hours later, we were getting really close, because we weren't moving very fast as traffic was getting tight.
As everyone who was there knows, the Woodstock festival was not held at Woodstock, the Arts Colony town where Albert Grossman had his home and recording studio (Bearsville?), and Dylan and the Band were holding up.
The festival, due to the concerns and protests of the local community, was not to be held at Woodstock, but at Max Yasker's farm about fifty miles further down the road.
At some point we picked up a hitch hiker, a fortunious move, as Jerry recalls in his blog -[http://users.section101.com/?page=user_blog&room=jerrymontgomery] because the guy had already been to the site and knew a back way in, down a dirt road and through some fields that emptied out right back stage, maybe two hundred yards to the right rear of the stage.
It wasn't long however, before we were blocked in and parked there for a few days.
It was damp when we left, and wet when we got there, but it only rained periodically, but when it rained, it rained.
Jerry remembers some acid being consumed by some, but not me. I didn't drink alochol or even smoke pot, and may have been the only straight and sober person there.
We did have a leather gourd with some wine that we shared, but for the most part, I didn't partake and should have a clear recollection of everything that happened.
I don't.
I do remember scouting out the scene, walking around amazed at everything, and eventually working my way down in front of the stage where I sat with some strangers, who became my friends, and listened to Richie Havens, who I remember the clearest.
Joan Biez also stands out as someone I actually paid attention to, but some of the bands just didn't interest me - like the Who. I just didn't get it.
After seeing Richie Havens and Joan Biez from pretty close up, I went for a walk around the outskirts of the scene, a big mistake because I never got down close to the front of the stage again.
I remember the food court shelling out all kinds of food, and the port a potties, and swimming naked in the lake with a bunch of strangers, actually just to get clean after a rain storm.
There was the medical facilities, that looked like a MASH tent, and there were helicopters constantly flying in and out and buzzing around above us.
Every once in awhile I went back to the car to see if any of the other guys had checked in, but usually nobody was there, until it got dark and we slept in the car, which at least was dry.
I knew my companions for a few years, having me them at Camden Catholic High School. Jerry lived near me in East Camden, is quiet but has a good sense of humor.
Marc was more serious, a transfer to CCHS from arch rival Bishop Eustice, which was an all guy prep school and basketball powerhouse at the time. Marc had played basketball, but was also pretty smart, and for some reason, transferred to Catholic and didn't play basket ball. He drifted towards me and my locker because I was a radical, politically, a "clean for Gene" anti-Vietnam war activist.
Bob Katchnick, which is spelled phonetically, was a real handsome - Troy Donahue like artist, who has a younger hippie sister, and was good friends with Bob Lodge, another artist - the Two Bobs.
Jerry and Marc were hanging out together and close to the wine gourd, while Bob took off on his own, and was probably doing extra-psychadelic enhancers, and of us all, was probably enjoying himself the most.
I know Mark wanted to leave almost as soon as we got there, or at least go get a motel room somewhere, but we were stuck now, in the middle of a half-million people.
That's more than Napoleon's army, and more people than some countries (Monaco, Lichenstein, and the UAE country that's been named to host the next America's Cup).
Finally The Band came on, the one group that I really came to Woodstock to see, and I couldn't get down close to the stage, but I got as I could to the stage left, and when I still couldn't see, I climbed a tree and laid back on one of the limbs with people walking along a trail below me.
While we never did hook up with Mark Connally from Pittsburgh, I thought it was quite unbelievable when, after awhile, I heard Jerry's distinct voice calling out my name. "Yo! Bill."
And I think I frightened him a little when I answered him from above, hanging on to a tree limb.
I saw the Band and heard them, and now I thought the whole trip was worth it.
But Dylan was nowhere to be seen, on or off stage, and I don't think I was the only one disapointed at that.
By Sunday afternoon, there were still a dozen acts to play, but we were pretty much set on getting out of there as soon as the car could be moved and there was traffic moving.
Mark was anxious to go and it didn't take too much convincing me to get going while the gettin' was good.
Bob Katchnick didn't want to leave though, because some of the best acts were still to come, so he said not to worry and that he'd hitch hike home and see us in a few days. And we didn't argue with him.
We left Sunday afternoon so we missed the Sunday night acts and, of course, Hendrix on Monday morning, but I'm sure Bob Katchnick was there, and I later learned from Mark Connally that he hung around and helped clean up the mess.
I don't remember the ride home at all, but when we got home, I do remember that I never saw my father so happy to see me, and his car, though we were both covered in mud. We didn't realize that the festival had made the national news, or the news at all, until we got home and it was only then that we realized what a big thing it was.
I'm going to have to blend Jerry's Blog narrative with this, to see how it jives, but he's told me that he remembers us getting back to Ocean City late Sunday night, and while Mark jumped in the shower, we walked down the alley and around the corner to the Purple Dragon Coffee House on 8th street (now the Horse Horse Ice Cream Parlor), just to show off our Woodstock mud.
If so, that was the only time I bragged about being at Woodstock, because the next day I had to be back at work at Mack & Manco's Pizza on the boardwalk, where I had to tell everybody that I spent the weekend in Dayton, Ohio at "freshmen orientation."
I would have gotten fired for sure if I told them I had actually been to Woodstock.
When I finally got to Dayton, I hooked up with Mark Connally and we became good friends, and eventually moved into an off campus apartment together.
A year or so after Woodstock, Richie Havens came to Dayton and played a concert at the Dayton Arena. I had seats right down front, and after the show I handed Richie a piece of paper that just said something like "Friend Bill Kelly from Woodstock" and the address of a party.
An hour or so after the concert, the party was going pretty strong, with people in every room, but I was hanging out in the kitchen, when a limo pulled up out front, and Richie Havens got out and asked for me, and joined us in the kitchen. The other party guests didn't believe me when I said Richie Havens was coming by, and I was pretty shocked to see him myself, but he came in and pretended he remembered me from Woodstock, and then proceeded to show us how to roll a joint with one hand, just like the cowboys do when they're riding a horse on the range.
By then I was smoking, and drinking draft beer, and we had a grand old time. Richie is still on the road, playing all the time, and when he's not on the road, he lives somewhere in North Jersey. Havens was interviewed on CNN a few nights ago (it should be on YouTube by now), along with Dick Cavatt, who had interviewed Joni Mitchell and Hendrix, both complete interviews also available. The interviewer kept asking Richie Havens these long questions, and Richie, being stoned, answered real slow in few sylables.
As for my Woodstock friends, Jerry is now a computer guy in the mid-west, while Mark is a lawyer in DC, whose married to a lawyer. After Woodstock, Mark got a scholarship to NYU in NYC, and lived in the Village where I visited him a few times. While there he too had an epiphany, joined ROTC and became a USMC officer after graduation. We stayed friends.
We left Bob Katchnick at Woodstock, and I was going to say that we haven't heard from him since, but now I do remember hitich hiking with a girlfriend from Dayton to Detroit and visiting Bob at Wayne State University. I'd like to find out what became of Bob, and get his Woodstock reminisces but I can't seem to get a correct spelling for his last name.
I really became a Band fan, and caught them performing in Cleveland at the Armory there in 1970, and then in Philly at the Spectrum many times, including tours backing Dylan.
One of the first articles I ever had published (Atlantic City Sun) was the story of how the Band, as Levon & the Hawks, played the summer of '65 at Tony Marts nightclub in Somers Point, where they were playing when Dylan convinced them to leave there to back him at Forest Hills.
Then in 1986 we brought The Band back to Somers Point for the first Tony Marts reunion at the original site of Tony Marts, Egos nightclub.
Tony's son Carmen Marotta, opened a nightclub in New Orleans in partnership with the Band's drummer and vocalist Levon Helm - the Classic American Cafe. Later, Levon and his band from Woodstock, including his daughter, played the Bubba Mac Shack in Somers Point (no longer there) a few times. The last time he played there he was sick, and couldn't sing, but since then, he's beaten the cancer and can now play drums and sing like the good old days. His last album "Dirt Farmer" won a Grammy and he's going to be playing the Borgatta Casino in Atlantic City (August 22) with the Black Crows, who recently recorded a live album at Levon's barn at Woodstock.
In all the Woodstock reminisces I've read over the past week, I haven't seen anything about Dylan, The Band, Albert Grossman, Big Pink or any of the reasons I went to Woodstock in the first place.
So I guess that gives me the opportunity to set the record straight, if I could only remember.
Bill Kelly
August 16, 2009
Browns Mills, NJ
MORE TO COME
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