MORE OF THE BEST OF THE WORST OF TIMES...

REUNION RECAP 2010 INCLUDED A TRIBUTE TO MY BEAUTIFUL GRANDMA WHO HAD PASSED AWAY DURING THAT EMOTIONAL WEEKEND...

"AFTER MIDNIGHT..."

ABOUT THIS ONE MY AUNT CARMELA SAID "WHEN I READ YOUR WORK IT'S NOT YOU THAT I AM READING... IT'S AS IF I AM READING YOUR GRANDFATHER'S WORK..." <= THAT IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT I'VE EVER RECEIVED. MY GRANDFATHER WAS AN ACCOMPLISHED WRITER, SPEAKER, AND RADIO HOST. HIS WORKS ARE SO IMPORTANT TO THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, THAT HIS RECORDINGS OF HIS RADIO SHOW "THIS IS PENNSYLVANIA" ARE ACTUALLY BEING KEPT AND RESTORED AT THE PA STATE ARCHIVES... STERN MAY BE THE KING OF ALL MEDIA, BUT NOT KING OF HISTORY OF PA. GRAMPA WAS KNOWN AS "MR. PA" AND MY AUNT CARM SAID I SOUNDED JUST LIKE HIM... IT STILL MAKES ME SMILE...

ENJOY IF YOU'D LIKE...



Summer in the even years is always a fun time for all of us, unless you are on the reunion committee… most think last year of “is it the reunion year??? NO… AWWWW SHUCKS we gotta wait another year!” but this weekend was the big one. And what a weekend it was.

THE VJ MEMORIAL GOLF GAME

Early Friday morning I woke up and decided to go to work. I don’t have much time saved so to take a whole day of vacation is good but if ya have a bunch of paperwork to do with a new car, the “license and registration please” envelope could use copies, city parking passes, etc etc etc… little things… so I decided to go to work for 2 hours and get all my “homework” done. And shockingly, it turned out perfect. I took 2 hours of time I would normally spend making drool pictures on the floor at my desk, and by the time I was ready to go, it was done.

Went home, picked up Gibby & the Schmidts (great band name) and headed to Deer Valley. The golf course is really nice, the same place we play at every reunion (lately)… they are really great people and the course is a fun one to run around on the carts on. Oddly a few were missing from the golfing party (aka the JOYS) but Charlie, Tony and Ricardo filled that void quite well. Although since the beginning of coming there, they never filled in the sand traps with sand. So it was a beach free day for all of us!

We started around 11 and after 18 drives off the teebox, I finally got the ball to move off the first tee. We continued and Gib as usual was clutch in the short game. My buddies Marc and Johnny k were hitting drives that were undeniably PGA worthy and well, if you had been playing since you were 5 (John) or buy fitted golf clubs (Marc) ya better be able to perform. They were no pros by any means, but they were better than me. and saying that is like saying Sammy Clemens is a better writer than trevonbach… BUUUUUT I was having fun killing worms and earth dwellers with my drives and chips. At one point it was mentioned that cleaning balls were a good idea for aerodynamics of the balls but I mentioned that “aero” meant “air”, and my ball wasn’t seeing much air so the cleanliness of my ball really didn’t matter. Gib had a GREAT tee shot, only to hit a tree and land 20 yards in front of us. But that’s how our long game was going. Gib came through though with chips and making just about every putt you could think of. If not in the hole, closer than john, marc, or I could put it.

After the grueling 18 were completed, we all sat around the table outside the clubhouse swapping stories and reminiscing about the day. The final talley of scores came in and turned out we came in second. Mikey and sean’s team, who hit off the girls’ tees, won and Mikey will retain the paper towel holder (as it was in my apt… check it out Mikey its perfect size)… I sat back quietly due to my searing pain from exercising, as my usual regimen for exercising is equal to 3 letters: N, I and L… so I knew full well it was the greatest I’d feel (physically) all weekend.

KARAOKE AT ELKS CLUB

After a well needed shower and half a nap, gib and I went to the Elk’s Club, a fine establishment for some family bonding and spirits were there to be had. Since I have hayfever, I decided that I wasn’t gonna sing, except for one song, and they didn’t have it. . . . “BARBIE GIRL”… it’s a stupid song by a group called AQUA and it is sung nervously by me, and literally performedby the king of karaoke, Jamal. Speaking of aqua, the Elk’s Club had some mighty fine tasting aqua that myself and uncle pat comitz enjoyed from a beer pitcher.

I saw a beautiful brunette walk in and start walking around the place nervously as if she went there by accident. I thought “awesome… maybe if I show off my skills in front of her on the pool table, she’d notice me.” then like clockwork, the double~mint twin popped in. YUP. The Italians had made it, and beyond being purdy, they were cousins. FIGURES! [Its like the time I saw another beautiful brunette coming thru the doors of the courtyard off i-83… she swaggered over to me and sat right beside me. wiping the drool from my chin I thought “what’s wrong with her? Why is she sitting here?” she said “HI PETER!” Yeah, this beautiful model of a woman… she knew me? oh my what a prize! It was the second coming of Brooke Shields when she was hot and relevant! I asked “how do I know you” and she said “I’m Jean-Anne Benson, Suzy’s daughter!” FIGURES! I hate Scott :) lucky! SOB ç that’s crying, not S.O.B… I don’t even know his mother so to say that is, well, hmmm I digress…]

Free pool. What? One of my many sporting events that I actually know about and enjoying playing was there, and FREE. To heck with aerodynamics, this game had nothing to do with balls in the air, but more like balls in pockets. So guess who hung by the table all day? Not me… TONY and CARLO! I couldn’t win in singles, and in doubles, they couldn’t be beat. Carlo was playing “make it take it” pool but tony had mentioned it was the first and only time they had ever shot pool together. So I let them have their fun playin grandma pool… “hit it hard n pray to god” pool… Dirty pool. Uncalled pocket pool. 5 year old pool. I could go on and on, but I was just happy cause I was playing my game today finally, yet frustrated because I couldn’t be worse at it at this point… I guess I should be like Michael Jordan, err Alan Iverson “I’m the franchise player, and we talking ‘bout practice?!?!?!!!”. EEEEEEEEEYup!

Night went on and spirits flowed. Songs were sung by all and the surprise of the night was… (drumroll please…………)  give manu some R-E-S-P-E-C-T! areefa had nothing on her this night. This shy bookreader has a voice on her better than the diva herself! She was pitch-perfect and her backup singer conveniently turned off his microphone knowing full well she’d upstage him. Sean may have obscure writing skills but his voice had nothing on this piece of artist! Manu literally rocked the house with her rendition of the powerful song.

Tim did his usual best work in front of the crowd, uniquely using a second mic as his own backup to the ol “bohemian rhapsody”. How fitting in a family of so many bohemians, that they have a rhapsody (queen rocks, and thanks wayne and garth for bringing this music to the mainstream) and a whiskey fueled timmy belted out the song as if he had done it before…

And these people joined us who never seem to come by that we notice… lasssshhhhhhhhhh-gosh? Huh? I thought it was osh-gosh-b’gosh… nope, the laskosh crew showed up in full force and sang the theme to deadliest catch! “where the faces are so cold, I drive all night to get back home…” its the cowboy song… oh yeah, “WANTEEEEEEEED dead or alive”… looks like the boys from jersey thought to make an appearance in song at least.

The night wore on, I had 2 pitchers of the usual (H20) and fun was had by all. Pete Jr grabbed the mike and asked for alls attention. It took some time cause most thought some idiot left his interior light on in his new car (license GFE-6728… not mentioning any names though but it was a blue accord with freshly copied “license and registration” paperwork… hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm)

The room quieted down and it was announced at about 11:22pm that at 11:07pm Friday night, we were at the wrong party. It was grampa’s birthday and grampa got the best gift of all. The doorbell finally rang and the girl next door was finally on his doorstep. He hugged rita and carried her over the threshold of their heavenly abode. They walked over to hang out with aunt patty and aunt mary Theresa, and the cotton candy haired fellow, uncle ange. They had a birthday party in grampa’s honor and hung out with uncle leon and aunt gladys, chilled with aunt connie and uncle vinnie, and even uncle joe brought some baileys along with some of gramp’s favorite, 7n7s.

Those of us at the elk’s club here on earth had a different feeling though. our loss was so great that it slowed down the party and if you’re me, you go into silent leave-me-alone mode. The quiet weird guy is back. I don’t have a woman to hug n cry with, I don’t have the option to have a fireside chat with the bottom of the bottle anymore… Its like a state of shock even though I knew this day would come. Its easy to say something while she’s still here, like “that’s what old people do” or “it won’t be long now” but when she heads off to the other party, it kinda sucks for those of us who are still here rotating thru the universe that she gave us life to live and be a part of...

I walked and sulked. I hugged and sulked. I had nothing to say cause I am so weird around people that I just kinda hung in the shadows. At one point I was sitting at a table looking at my shoes. Kara asked me to come sit at the “COOL TABLE” with her, kris, jmac, nate, and kirstin but I informed her no, I was sitting at the cool table. It was me, and a bunch of chairs.

The party wound down and I was close to just going straight home. As a clinically depressed fellow, you just don’t know what to do in these situations. Ya just go with the flow… but in my decisions and thoughts, I knew now the living needed me to be there, and the dead needed my final respects. So as much as I didn’t want to but was obligated to, I followed JMac to the manor and found myself at the head of the bed, where my peaceful, gaped-mouthed beautiful grandma lied. There were chairs set up there, but I felt more appropriate kneeling. As the man in black said locked up in folsom prison… “I hang my head and cry”… it was pretty odd being there, and I kept expecting her to breathe in and shake it off, but it never happened. After a minute of my own infinite respect payment, I felt a hand on my back and dad was there to console me.

I eventually got up and went back to silent mode again. so I did something I never did before. I thought about work and doing this. I said to myself “I can’t wait to go to work on Monday!!!!!!!!” you guys don’t understand how this helps me and makes me feel good to send out goofy stuff and make people smile. Its like listening to blues and feeling cleansed after a great soul shakeup.

So I, the weird silent guy, took a tour of the apt as she left it. Looked at the decorations around the place. Saw the interlocked wooden people that used to be on the angel bookshelf at 2200… I saw pics of all of the cousins, all of her kids, young paintings of gram n gramps… jewelry in and out of jewelry boxes, bathroom accessories, and different well-hung pictures of beautiful settings and family trees… the Zarbo birthdays calendar on the side of the toilet in the bathroom (it had my birthday wrong I may add J its 10/29/76…)

A few of the things I took cell pics of. . . one of which was stuffed on the side of the mirror in the hallway leading to the hallway of the manor. a big-headed baby with blonde hair and blue eyes. Then an older one of that same big-headed baby with his overalls on that said proudly… “Pete’s #1 Son!” Yup, that was me as a baby. There was a picture hanging on the wall with the saying “I just can’t ignore the girl next door” written below a sketch of their houses… and finally there was a quote that hung stuffed in the frame of a picture that read “the human race has only one real effective weapon… that is laughter!” – Mark Twain. The fun thing about that particular quote is that daisies are growing out of it as if it were part of the painting...

Before I left the karaoke party though, uncle chris gave me a good piece of advice…”this didn’t happen till tomorrow night at midnight”, and to paraphrase, so enjoy the reunion and take care of gram once the fun is done. Even though I handle things differently than most, for the most part I couldn’t get Clapton out of my head… “chingachingachingachinga CHING CHING DA LING... After midnight, we gonna let it all hang dooooooown!!!!!!!”

Still at the manor at 2am or so, we thought it was a good idea to leave and prep for the fun-infested ZFR 2010… and so we did.

ZFR 2010

When you wake up after a tragedy in the family it just isn’t the same kind of wake up as before. Its more of a “take a deep breath, exhale, and get yer toys ready, today will be fun, but somber…” [CHING CHING DA LING…. “After midnight...”]

I picked up tim and gib and we headed out 22 to 39. nice thing: I had GPS… not so nice thing: I looked up WEST hanover park on google. It couldn’t find anything so I called dad for directions. When we got there it was found out it was EAST hanover park. Forget directions, I can’t even get the name right… BUT we made it.

I parked and gib ran off to the pavilion because he was starving. It was said to me that he grabbed a cheeseburger, added fixins and turned around to eat and a man was there. Gib said “oh hello, who are you related to?” and the man replied “I am the head of this family…” that’s when gib realized he didn’t recognize anyone. He offered to give back the burger, but they were nice and said take it. Turns out his stomach was stronger than his eyes… he got food from another picnic! OOPS! our reunion pavilion was under a seemingly LARGE gazebo-shaped pavilion, and it was located in a never-before seen place behind the tennis courts. An obvious mistake, but a sweet screwup! Haha he said they mentioned that if we had any ribs a payback would be nice but alas they didn’t ask for chicken and orzo salad so GIB WINS!!!!!!!!! Woohoo!

This large octagonal pavilion very quickly began getting smaller and smaller the more people arrived. And the usual suspects were grillin, others brought food from shrimp to salads to ramen noodle something good to pineapple upside down cake. Plenty of food for the hungover nutzis…

Yet in this gazebo, the food line was basically a circle. And a circle that didn’t move at all. everyone kinda stood there waiting for someone to move but noone did. So ya picked and chose what was close to you and ate while in said circle.

Somehow I had no problem picking and choosing what I wanted and WOLFED down 4 plates. What was I some national guardsman? Like it or not, I had better exercise today, or I was flat gaining 40 pounds from what went down my piehole.

Zarbo Olympics started off with Softball, barely digesting the food, we all got teams picked between timmy and nate. Jill started off for us on nate’s team. [on a side note, not that she looked any better or worse when we met her, but Jiminy Christmas! I thought there was a divorce and remarry in progress when Jill got out of the car with the kids. I hadn’t recognized her. And what was this beautiful young lady doing with my uncle chris? Is she available? Oh crap its just Jill…. Boo for me!]

At some point nate’s team was down 6-0 until we got our bats working… it was an epic game complete with broken ankles for the first base runners (FYI FOR THE FUTURE… SLATE ROCK DOESN’T MAKE GOOD BASES), to bee stings for certain masciullis named tony, to a home run by mikey into the tennis court (a first for the ZFR since we’ve been there at EAST hanover park), to plenty of errors from nate’s team captain, and even one or 2 for tim’s team captain. It was tied up in the 8th inning (extra innings in softball) when tim got up and cracked the ball for the final RBI to win 11-10. noone complained about the score, it was a tre-cool game, and fun was had by all.

As I was walking to the car I noticed a tall soldier looking man with a girl he hadn’t introduced me to. One of those “too hot for the hottub” girls… or “to hot to even notice me” kind of girls. Typical of this man, I told this soldier fellow to stop so I may be introduced. Wow. I think I had to wipe drool from my chin once again, yet realized this woman wasn’t related! Woohoo! Yet she is from missu, so she may as well be a mirage… Maybe I should go out for basic training. I certainly could eat apparently!

At this point the recap from my perspective gets sidetracked. I had a personal sweatgland problem in a particular area of me-self so I went home took a fast shower and changed so I was more compfy, plus gave me an opportunity to drive the car again J
When I got back the basketball game had ended and chuck said he had lost… its so sad to hear an 800 year old man pout when he loses at basketball, but also fun when you have to think of all the talk he usually spits when prepping for a basketball game at the reunion. I figure its cause Beth Herchelroath wasn’t on his team, or even there at all.

We headed inside and I saw people playing bingo, all the new banners from the new “Families” made over the last 2 years, origami, silent auctions going on, things offered as a family yard sale, and the list goes on. The smell of meatballs and noodles filled the room and after 4 plates of lunch I wasn’t exactly hungry so I waited the allotted 30 minutes for the line for dinner to be made and end so I could get the leftovers. As I waited Eddie and Lita and Schuyler pulled in. WOW were they late. Yet Lita had just gotten back from Thailand with Schuyler and its from the other side of the world so to say they were jet lagged would be an understatement. Their nights were our days so it takes some time to readjust (like I have a clue. As we found out in max’s tunes, tre doesn’t fly)

Then I got in line and met yet another beautiful woman named Amy. What is this my lucky day? Amy asked who I was and how I fit in to the family. I told her I was pete’s son pete’s son pete. So everyone calls me tre. I asked the same and she said she was from Montana (maybe…. I explained I didn’t even know where that was but still a slight bonus for me… YES!!!!!!!!!) and she was related to the laskosh’s (crap!)… I was battin 1000 this weekend… ungh…

On a side note… is every woman in our family a model?
And a ps to the side note… you might be a redneck if you go to a family reunion lookin for a wife… … I had some sunburn on my neck too…

So we ate n ate (I had 2 plates of dinner), listened to the mac play “the cabin” among other favorites, had a family jam band play with da cofe on harmonica, Patrick played his banjo with one of the lashkosh rock n roll boys, and even the children put on a talent show. Its been a few years since the talent show was a part of the reunion but this year they found time for it. How refreshing! We had a dance recital to singers (sal sang an entire song and langan sang his wo-wo-wo song (bon jovi) and lina sang the tweet tweet song she always sang with gramma when she stopped by.)

Kiwi did the ultimate though. kiwi passed the torch to a young lashkosh relative and the young man now owns “talk me out to the ballgame”…

No no I didn’t forget max. max was part of everything. He stood on stage diligently playing along with the bands. He was a young mini-me to many of the guitar players, and it was a great sight to see. Remember max… you’re part of the 4g band, just ya have to wait for nick to grow older and learn the bass.

On a side note #2… I held my godson and ran around with him and he didn’t cry. Hate to say it but the highlight of the weekend for me. babies always cry with me, but I guess something was different this weekend… NICK RULES BABY!!!!!!!!! moving on…

Once all was done it was time to clean up. You know how that goes… organized CHAOS!

We left and went to JM+E’s for the after-reunion reunion and enjoyed telling stories, singing, drinkin, and all around good fun.

All in all a fine weekend indeed, and since she wasn’t there physically, I let gram watch the festivities thru my eyes, and lemme tell ya, she loved it! She’ll always be with me in thought, spirit, and heart. I’ll miss ya, but thanks for this life, and this loving family. Without them……I am nothing.

LOVE,
III