I was fortunate to grow up in the 1950’s, the last great flowering of the American Songbook. My musical tastes were formed by viewing the many television variety shows like Lawrence Welk and the Bell Telephone Hour as well to listening to Broadway show albums. My Uncle Joey on the Polish side of the family exposed me to the glory of Gershwin and Kern, the lush melodies of operetta and the songs of movie musicals. Curiously I discovered classical music all on my own. I have a great knowledge of classical music that I learned from reading the liner notes of records, over and over. It was my Uncle Joe who bought the first Hi-Fi that I would sit and listen in front of, transfixed like Nipper, the RCA dog.

Here are few some songs that changed my life growing up through adolescence before the Beatles and rock and roll took over the airwaves:

“Only Make Believe” (from Show Boat)  -My mother would sing this song a lot. Did she think her love was only that? Indeed Show Boat has become a great influence on me as I identified with Julie LaVerne, the tragic chanteuse. I think my Uncle Joe and my mother saw the 1949 revival on Broadway so it was played a lot. “Old Man River” too of course.

“If I Loved You” (from Carousel)  – Another favorite of my mom, always tentative love. I still sob at the ending when Billy Bigelow says, “I loved you Julie, know that I loved you.”

“Rhapsody in Blue” – One of the first LP’s I bought at Merkels, a butcher that for some reason had a weekly record promotion.

“On the Street Where You Live” (from My Fair Lady) – Another LP but a lesson learned. I bought this at Woolworths for 99 cents. It was not the original cast recording as I soon discovered when I brought it home and played it.

“The Beer Barrel Polka” and the “Too  Fat Polka” – music to eat golumpki and kielbasie by.

“Volare” – My Italian uncle taught me this song on his guitar and I would sing it at family gatherings. OH OH!

“Shine on Harvest Moon” – This is the song that I sang in the fifth grade at my parochial school talent show. From then on, I was nicknamed “Shine On” by the lady who would sell meatball heroes for 25 cents at the deli next door.

“The Merry Widow Waltz”  (from Lehar’s operetta) – I hummed this often and danced around the living room.

“The Drinking Song” and the “Serenade” (from the Student Prince) – Mario Lanza’s voice in the movie sent chills down my spine.

“Cry” sung by Johnnie Ray – “If your sweetheart sends a letter of goodbye.  It’s no secret you’ll feel better if you cry …” a closeted homosexual paean sung by one to one.

“Come on-a My House” sung by Rosemary Clooney. The theme of inviting someone in with fruits and nice things to eat, but with the hidden offering of sexual favors.

“Some Enchanted Evening” (from South Pacific) – My favorite song of all. I would hum  this to myself as I stood alone in Julius’ looking for that stranger. I finally met him and his name is Gary.

I am a stutterer.

Like an alcoholic, the admission of stuttering is the definition of the condition. When I was a boy I lived in fear of speaking. I stuttered, albeit not severely but still I stuttered. There are many theories as to why one stutters – physical, emotional, traumatic and there are many treatments but none conclusive.

My first memory of stuttering is in the second grade at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Brooklyn when Sister Rose called my mother in to tell her of my problem. I had no idea I had one and in a very typical way, the naming of the problem made it a bigger problem! Now everyone would be watching and listening to everything I said, including me which of course, made it worst. Sister Rose offered no solutions but my mother did: “You should go out and play more instead staying inside listening to your stupid records over and over again”, “think before you speak”, “Enunciate” and the big one – “slow down!”  I still that get one!

I could deduce that my speech impediment was caused by family unrest and soap opera drama. Who knows or is it just genetic? I noticed a British patrician stammer pattern on my mother’s side of the family but we were not to the manor born. “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.”  I never got it …
However, stuttering or not, I was the class clown, making wiseass comments from my strategically placed desk in the back of the classroom. Eventually my teacher would find me out and would punish me by making me stand in the front corner of the classroom facing the wall with a very colorful dunce cap on my head. Little did Sister Mary Joseph know that she had put me in the limelight, on center stage in costume to try out my wisecracks to a captive audience. All I needed was bells to be the class court jester like Danny Kaye n the movie. This was a role I could play and not be me.

I was desperate for attention from anyone, no matter the inappropriate situation. And it isn’t it ironic that I used language as my method. You may not know this, but usually stuttering disappears when a person sings or acts. There are many famous celebrities who stutter: James Earl Jones, Marilyn Monroe, Mel Tillis and Carly Simon.

Also we stutterers are clever people: we develop many tricks to hide our torture to get around full guttural stops. We learn esoteric words (see my above use of albeit) or we use synonyms “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall was fa-fa-fa-fantastic”, when I meant to say fabulous. Fantastic works as a substitution but if you know Judy you know she was fa-fa-fa-bulous! Syntax comes in handy too so we can twist the sentence around in myriad ways. My studying of Latin came in handy – omnia vincet amor – “All conquers love”.
In 1958 we moved to Newburgh, New York where I attended Sacred Heart Parochial School. Still stuttering, I decided in the fifth grade to enter the parish talent show to show everyone that when I sang, I didn’t stammer. I picked “Shine on Harvest Moon” to sing because I loved the song on my “Sing along with Mitch” album that I played over and over. On the day before I asked and rehearsed with the church organist, Mrs. O’Brien who accompanied me on an old upright no-so-in-tune piano.

So there I was on a cold Sunday afternoon, standing on the stage at Gallo Hall in the basement of Sacred Heart School. Out in the dark were friends and family and another hundred people. I nodded to Mrs. O’Brien to start. I was petrified and I sang standing very still, “Shine on, Shine on Harvest Moon up in the sky. I Ain’t had no loving since January, February, June or July.”

I got through the first part when I saw my mother’s face in the audience. I thought she was gonna run down the center aisle yelling “sing out Louise!”   So I finished up with more bravado. Polite applause. Not my mother screaming out “that’s my boy, that’s my little Anthony,” like from the last scene in The Music Man.  I bowed and quickly went off stage till the conclusion of the talent show. At the end, there was a grand bow of all the performers including my friend Peter who had played “Lady of Spain” on his accordion; Shaking it at the end to great applause.  He won! (The bitch)
The two people I wanted to impress the most were in the audience; my mother and my teacher, Sister Mary Joseph. I ran down the center stage three little steps to my mother. “How’d I do ma?” How did I do?” “Anthony, it was nice. But you just stood there, like a clump and why didn’t you sing, “For Me and My Gal” like on the Mitch Miller album that you play over and over?”  “Thanks ma.” I looked all over for Sister Mary Joseph but she already left. I waited till class on Monday to get a response but she said nothing.

No one got that I did not stutter.

I am a stutterer.

However on the next day, Monday morning back at school I decided to treat myself to lunch with the quarter that my father gave me when I got home from the talent show. He couldn’t go because of his Parkinson’s but he asked me all about it.

During lunch hour, I went next door to the little Italian deli that was popular with all of us school kids. I ordered a small meatball hero.  I slid my quarter into the nice Italian lady, Mrs. Costanzo’s hand. She reached out over the counter, grasped my hand in hers and looked right into my eyes smiling saying to me, “Baby you sang so nice yesterday”. She then reached backed to Mr. Costanza and handed me the larger 35 cents sub. “Shine on, Anthony, shine on!” Holding back my tears, I barely got out, “Oh thank you so much Mrs. Costanza, oh thank you so much.” … I didn’t stutter. She called me “Shine On” till I graduated three years later.

So thus began my life journey in the arts to find a voice, to find a love and not to be known as the stuttering Porky Pig but maybe the sexy actor, Sal Mineo or the dynamic and articulate director Elia Kazan.

But  back then who would have known there was a secret entrepreneur inside me that with the help of all you and especially Gary that I am now here speaking in front of you today, somewhat fluent, still not slow but feeling very successful and loved. “The rain in Spain, stays mainly on the plain.” I think I finally got it!

But what I actually didn’t’ get until I wrote this story was hat Mrs. Costanza for all that time wasn’t calling me Shine On.  She was telling me  to “Shine On!” “Shine On!’

So I  think it’s time after fifty eight years, it’s time to “Shine On” and sing “Shine on Harvest  Moon” again in front of my family.

But I ain’t doing it alone! So please help me out and sing along with Tony.  Somewhere Mrs. Costanza shines on and Mom,  we’re singing,” For Me and My Gal” too.

Sing along with Tony:

Oh, Shine on, shine on, harvest moon

Up in the sky;

I ain’t had no lovin’

Since January, February, June or July.

Snow time ain’t no time to stay

Outdoors and spoon;

Shine on, shine on, harvest moon,

or me and my gal.

The bells are ringing for me and my gal
The birds are singing for me and my gal

Everybody’s been knowing to a wedding they’re going
And for weeks they’ve been sewing, every Susie and Sal

They’re congregating for me and my gal
The Parson’s waiting for me and my gal

And sometime I’m goin’ to build a little home for two
For three or four or more
In Loveland for me and my gal

My father and I, before the days of air conditioning, often went to the park on Sundays to escape the heat during then the Dog Days of summer. It is ironic and coincidental that the parks we visited were all designed by Olmstead and Vaux.

When we lived in Brooklyn, my father took me by the hand for a short two block stroll up 9th Street to the entrance of Prospect Park, the jewel of the designs of Olmstead and Vaux. We would toss my red ball that he had bought me, back on forth on the Long Meadow. My father was very lean and athletic and we would sometimes race up to the Picnic House to get out of a sudden summer shower. He always let me win.

One day the whole family went to the park and while Dad and I were playing catch, my younger brother Michael somehow wandered off up into the Ravine when my mother wasn’t looking as she tended to my newly born sister in her ornate big, black baby carriage. After a short frantic search, a policeman returned the crying lost boy to us. He cried harder when dad gave him a good smack. I was rewarded for my help with a paddle boat ride on the lake followed by a vanilla custard ice cream cone. In the early 1970’s when I came back to Park Slope after graduate school, I returned to Prospect Park only to find it in disrepair and crime ridden.

I have always thought of Central Park in Manhattan as my back yard, living from 1966 at various times only a block from the park on West 83rd Street; West 110th Street and now West 96th Street. My father first took me there in 1953 after we attended a rally for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in Union Square. We drove up in his car and he put me on a stationary horse on the great carousel by the Dairy Barn. It wasn’t long before I was leaning out on the moving horses that went up and down, reaching out to snatch the brass ring. That is my only memory of Central Park with my Dad, so Central Park belongs more to me than to us.

When we moved to Newburgh New York in 1958, my father would take me to Downing Park for his outdoor exercises to stave off his encroaching Parkinson disease. Downing Park was in the middle of Newburgh and designed by Olmstead and Vaux in memory of their landscaper mentor Andrew Jackson Downing who designed the Mall in Washington DC and who died an early tragic death. Downing Park was a green oasis in the blighted chaos of Newburgh, a rundown river city in the Hudson Valley.

His sickness was the reason we moved upstate, since his factory relocated there in that great mass urban exodus to the suburbs of the 1960’s. The gravel paths that wound around the lake and up the hill to the Pergola were perfect for my father’s peregrinations; it gave him good traction. He was very self conscious about his stumbling and shuffling due to his disease, and the park was usually empty early evenings when we took our walks. He would lean on me as we walked around and around; his fixed glance straight ahead,

concentrating on his impaired motor skills to build up his agility. We didn’t talk except to point out a squirrel, bird or roller skater coming precariously close to our path.  Sometimes he would build up momentum and he would be able to walk a short distance without faltering. This made him very happy and a smile would somehow shine through his rigid face. I could sympathize with this forward movement and joy of being able to walk without assistance for those few steps. I would feel the same way when I sometimes could get a string of words out, glide along and not stutter till the last syllables.

“Let’s go feed the ducks!” My father used to love to feed the ducks on Polly Pond in the park. He would give me 25 cents to purchase corn feed. I would go into the Stone Shelter and the lady behind the counter would give me a tiny brown paper sack with the top folded ever so neatly down and stapled shut. We would walk to edge of the pond and the duckies would waddle up to our hands and peck up the corn. In the fall came the aggressive geese that would bellow and bluster and suck up the corn like an angry vacuum cleaner. I Ioved their warm breath on my open palm.

Downing Park after a storm

In July and August, after my walk with Dad, our family stayed for the weekly band concerts. An amphitheater was built in 1936 out of flag stone and granite. Green hedges lined the upstage while a moat filled with goldfish separated the platform from the audience. The audience sat on long green wooden benches on a hill that slightly rose up, a mini-Greek theatre. The concert band was comprised of Italians who wore crisply pressed white shirts, captain hats with black pants and ties looking like a Good Humor Ice Cream Man in his truck.

The program was usually comprised of marches; famous classical miniatures and Broadway show tunes. I was in heaven. Stars and Stripes – William Tell Overture – A Symphonic Portrait of Porgy & Bess (arranged by Richard Russell Bennett) – Leroy Anderson’s Bugler’s Holiday – The Blue Tango. Sometimes a local soprano would sing “Un Bel Di”, “I Could Have Danced All Night” or “Summertime” There were theme nights too: Oktoberfest! – Italian Night! – Salute to Broadway! – Victor Herbert Tribute! and Down South American Way! etc. There would be guest appearances by a barbershop quartet, a Dixie land band, jazz combo or student accordionist playing “Lady of Spain”. I would get goose bumps when he shook the accordion to vibrate the last chorus. I would sing to myself “Lady of Spain, I adore you. Pull down your pants and I’ll explore you!”

My Dad sat in our car parked on a roadway right above the rise of the hill to listen to the program since he didn’t want anyone to see him shake from his palsy. I would sit in the front row all by myself while my mother and sister sat a few rows behind me. I sometimes had to chase down my brother Michael running around behind the stage. We usually didn’t stay for the whole program and left after intermission. My mother got bored easily. I would try to spy out a friend or neighbor who could drive me home. I hated to leave and miss the second half. I am sure I made a pest of myself to people I hardly knew, begging them for a car ride home. I felt trapped in Newburgh, you couldn’t get around unless you had a car and my mother was not a “soccer mom” type who would gladly chauffeur her children to their activities.

It was always sort of sad looking back up the hill to see my father sitting in the car alone like Quasimodo, a lonely gargoyle silently listening, hidden in the shadows of the green cathedral of leaves. Parkinson had left his face expressionless, set in a fixed dull stare of non-emotion. I would run up between numbers and bring him an ice cream cone that I bought from the Good Humor truck. At times I would gently wipe off the vanilla drips from his stubbly chin.

One night there was a sing-along and all the audience joined in. My family was not the sing- around-the-camp fire kind of family. We would watch the TV show, Sing-along with Mitch in silence. I was particularly self conscious about singing around people even though I sang along to my Broadway LP’s when no one was home. I gave John Raitt a run for his money when I sang both parts of “Hey There.” This is curious to me, since I never stuttered when I sang so you think I would “Sing Out Louise!” any chance that I could get. I had a beautiful voice when I was younger but when I became a teenager and to this very day, I can not hold a tune and sing flat. I worry that I don’t sing good enough. I never play a game I can’t win so I guess I don’t sing out loud from fear of my mother’s ever present criticism that lingers till.

However that night the voices of the audience so filled the night air in the park that it was hard to resist. Everybody was lustily singing along as I looked back and saw my father mouthing the words from the car with a big smile on his face. I couldn’t hear my father singing but like a deaf man I could “lip read” the melody of his voice.

“Casey would waltz

With the strawberry blonde

And the band played on.

He’d glide ‘cross the floor

With the girl he’d adore

And the band played on.

But his brain was so loaded

It nearly exploded

The poor girl

Would shake with alarm

He’d ne’er leave the girl

With the strawberry curl

And the band played on.”

I mimed the words…”C-C-Casey would w-w-waltz…”

Downing Park is still there up in Newburgh; Prospect Park is there and has had a renaissance in Brooklyn. And I walk every week in my beloved Central Park that will be there for all time. My sister and brother are still here. My dad however is long gone.

I remember our days in the parks – Prospect, Central and Downing – whenever I hear a marching band or a duck quack or a goose hiss, or the ding-a-ling of an ice cream truck, or the organ at the Carousel. I hear my father’s silent voice singling along. Maybe one day I will sing a song out loud and not give a damn.

“And the band played on …”

Thank you Dad

and

thank you, Olmstead and Vaux.

“Sing, sing a song  (press to listen to this song)

Sing out loud

Sing out strong

Sing of good things not bad

Sing of happy not sad.

Sing, sing a song

Make it simple to last

Your whole life long

Don’t worry that it’s not

Good enough for anyone

Else to hear

Just sing, sing a song.

Sing, sing a song

Let the world sing along

Sing of love there could be

Sing for you and for me.

Sing, sing a song

Make it simple to last

Your whole life long

Don’t worry that it’s not

Good enough for anyone

Else to hear

Just sing, sing a song.“