There are friends who you remember throughout your lifetime: ones who you don't or can't forget. They're always there to talk to lift your spirits, give advice, or are on your mind when thinking back on old times. My friend Kenny - aka The Professor - is one of those friends and was quite a character. We came up together from grade school onward, remaining friends through our adulthood with a bit of a pause. He moved away somewhere in New Jersey and I hadn't heard from him since shortly after I was married in the 1980s. That's until we reconnected a few years ago and now we keep up occasionally. Some friends thought Kenny got his nickname "The Professor" because people thought he looked like a university educator. The truth is it was because he wore a lab coat while taking Optical Lab at Bok where we took shared-time classes between there and Bishop Neumann High. I had taken the Electric Shop, so we went in different directions when entering school. That's if we made it to Bok, sometimes cutting classes and taking the afternoon off. There were a couple of times where we stopped at his house between classes and had a few beers before heading into class. That wasn't a wise thing. Electricity, alcohol, and irresponsibility were a recipe for mayhem. Thankfully we both became responsible adults. We were good friends both in both our youth and as we age. We both shared an interest in the same type of music and a few other things, although there were some things that could have kept us from a good friendship neither of us let them get in the way. Professor was famous for his parties. He had gotten me a job at the factory where he worked with other neighborhood friends among others. He and I and a former classmate named Steve worked there together for a couple of years before moving on to much better jobs. There were days that Professor didn't come to work because of those parties, he was having too much of a good time to let the job get in the way. Not that the job was anything spectacular. To get into those parties, you had to be an active participant in the event being held. For instance, during the "Beat the Skunk" party, he had a large stuffed-toy skunk that you had to take a few swings at if you were going to be admitted. No swing, you were out the door. Same with the "Burn the Pope's Picture" party. This happened around the time that Pope John Paul II came to Philly, and before Sinead O'Connor ripped up his photo on Saturday Night Live. If you didn't bring the full-color photo that the Inquire inserted in the Sunday paper, you couldn't come in. No reasonable facsimiles allowed.
Professor's father was a quiet, retired man who was home every day. The unusual thing was that he would turn over the house to Kenny and his parties instead of kicking everyone out. If twenty or so young guys and girls showed up at my door with pictures of the pope and no good intentions on their mind, my dad would have thrown everyone out, myself included.
Being the straight man, I often missed these events. I never wanted to miss work, and on one of the days I tried to skip, I got caught. I remember a day when SEPTA was on strike and a few of us devised a plan to call in and tell the boss we couldn't come to work because we had no ride. The problem was, we did it from a payphone down the block from the job, and two of the ladies walked by as we were calling in. The boss said we should all meet at my house, and he was on the way to pick us up. I tried to do a quick recovery: "Uh, hang on a second...What?...Oh yeah?... Hey, my dad's going to drive us up, we'll be there shortly." Busted! I wasn't even thinking that traffic noise near the public phone may be giving my intentions away. O, being young and stupid!
I believe Steve may have attended some of those parties. We all worked at a factory that made bedroom slippers for the ladies. It was a good place to start your working life, but you definitely didn't want to stay there; one of those places that was as much a playground as a place to work. One day I was looking down the freight elevator shaft, waiting for the lift to come up for me at the top floor, the fifth. Some guy John was getting on the elevator as it stopped on three. And lo, there was Steve on four, hoisting over the top of the gate a bucket of white glue and water. He dumped it right down on his victim, and on the boss who walked on just as he started to pour. Both men yelled, and Steve took off down the fire escape, and no one but he and I were the wiser to what happened. I buckled over from laughing so hard that I don't know how I recovered before they made their way up to me. The next time I saw Steve downstairs, he said, "Don't say a word..." and of course, I wasn't. We had a great laugh and the other two had to clean up: the boss had a change of clothing, but John had to head home because his clothes were soaked in glue and water.
Sure, I worked some crummy jobs before getting training and into a career rather than just a job. But at least I had some fun, even in the worst of them. One thing I noticed, that as I went to a new job I got more responsibility and money, but had less fun. Oh well, it was a good trade-off. All young guys should have a dirty, lousy job before they launch a career. It will help them to appreciate the good jobs when they come, and the fun they had while waiting for the good work to come.
Professor and I took different career paths, as you can't expect to do the same thing as all your friends. But wherever we landed, we both have some fine memories as well as humorous ones to look back on. That's always a great thing.
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