More than I have ever known before in my life, friends are more precious than any riches we could ever gain.
True friends are few and rare.
My father, now deceased; God bless him, got me a job working as a night janitor at the city hall building in Camden, New Jersey. People called it the milk bottle building because the odd 1930's design made it look like a gigantic milk bottle sitting in the center of Camden, just blocks away from the Camden Rutgers University campus.
Each and every summer from 8Th grade until my High School graduation, my Dad-Pop, always made sure I had a job. Well there was one partial summer I was a camp counselor for Pine Hill Boy Scout camp, but that is a whole other story unto itself.
In the summer of 1963 I was thrown in with 4 other high school guys working as janitors along side the regular city janitors who worked the night shift year round. We had a specific assignment: remove the 30 years of old was build up from all areas of the building. Years later, when I was a project manager in a city 800 miles to the south I realized that this "wax removal" project was a classic "Pork Barrel" job someone thought up to create jobs and get a kick back for the company hired to do the project. I did not care because for me it meant a steady summer of work and pay.I was saving up for college so it was a blessing for me, although at the time I was an ungrateful complainer.
I did not like the idea of having to spend all my summer nights in a big public building while all my friends were doing other "normal" teenage things with their Summer nights.
Me and the other 4 boys decided to make the best of it and have some fun in doing so.
As it turned out, there was a piano in court room #4 on the second floor just above the Mezzanine. One of my cohorts was a sophomore Italian kid, Vic, who was very good on the piano. He could play almost anything we asked. I was a tenor sax player, and I could also handle the clarinet, recorder and flute. Randy was a tough kid from Camden Catholic who was a good guitar player, and like me he was going into his junior year of high school. Then there was Benny, the black kid from the projects who went to school on the "Hill" off the Cooper River. They called it that because it looked like an old castle which sat on a bluff overlooking the Cooper river. It could be seen from the Admiral Wilson expressway which snaked along side the river. It had worse names, and the tough Italian kids called "the Castle on Nigga Hill". because it looked like an old castle and because it was almost all black kids who went there.
It was the early 60's, and to hear it told today prejudice was to be found in every aspect of society. Not true. Yes, I saw discrimination, but not like I see today. The make up of the people I worked with there was about 60% white and 40% black and Hispanic. Yet there was never any harsh words or name calling. People had more respect for each other in those days. In this situation, we all were equal in our work and in our socialization. If anyone was tough on people, it was the older people who had the right, and in those days, the DUTY , to "Straighten out kids". They did not have to be your kids. It was just a cultural thing, and as young people we knew and respected adults. When we were told we were messing up by an older person, we listened. I'm not saying we liked it, but we were trained at home to "Respect our elders." I sure wish we had more of that in today's culture.
None of us ever felt prejudice toward Benny. He was the drummer, and he had this large Conga drum. Benny held us four white guys on the mark with his excellent rhythm and precise beat.
The cleaning crew, which now included our small band of high school boys punched in on the clock at 3pm every day. Our lockers and entrance place was just across from the police station in the basement where we saw prisoners milling about and newly arrested drunk drivers,Prostitutes, wife beaters, petty theft guys and even some gang members coming in through the door right next to where we had to punch the clock. Being a white kid from the suburbs of Somerdale, this was all new and sometimes scarey to me. However, it was a learning experience I could never get in any college or high school.
We were an unlikely band, but after a couple of weeks of working together, instead of eating lunch in the basement where our lockers were, we took to eating in courtroom #4. where it started out with Tony playing while we ate. I suggested we all bring our instruments, and sort of became the founder of the band. Two weeks into the summer we were in Court Room # 4 every day at 6 PM, lunch time. We would eat quickly and then jam for the next 45 minutes. The sound could be heard throughout the entire building. It was mostly made of marble and granite, so the acoustics for a band were great, and it actually made us sound better than we were.
We did some standards, tried some rock pop tunes, and even did a little classic type stuff. Beetohven's 5Th in rock was popular along with . "How Gentle is the rain", by a black group based on the classical piece by Mozart, and of course Elvis's Its Now or Never [O solo Mia]a tune stolen from the classic Italian opera.
So the summer evenings of hard labor became a little more mellow with music and good companions. The other "regular" janitors loved it because they all agreed that "live" music beat listening to the radio, no matter how awful it was.
One summer night after we played our hearts out on some "Old time Standards" as we called them, we started to talk about being friends and how great it was to have friends who had a common interest like music.
Just then Vinny, and old Italian guy, of the "Regular" janitor crew stood up and gave us a big lecture on friendship.
He went right over to Vic, and put his finger in the kids face," You have no friends," he roared like a stern father rebuking his kid.
Vic was surprised, and defensive. " Hey old man, you don't know what you are talking about." Vic replied and stood up a full foot taller than he old Italian janitor.
Vinny didn't flinch one iota, and he was going o show Vic he meant business. He wagged his finger again in Vic's face. " Listen kid! I told you that you have no friends! and I mean it!"
"What?" In those days we still had respect for elders, so Vic was not happy but he did speak in a defensive but polite way to the old guy.
"You listen to me kid," Vinny stood firm as an old oak tree stump,' If you have only one real friend in life
you'd be one very lucky guy."
I don't know about the others in our "Band" but it took me about 50 years - half a century- to know that Vinny was dead on in his advice.
