By six PM the last of the trucks had been parked and the crew had washed and changed clothes. The families were all there. Khalif had arrived with his wife and two children in tow and his mom and dad along with him. I was glad he’d thought to bring them. I greeted his father with a hug. His dad was a hugger and he fit in the neighborhood like he was born here. His name was “Samir” and I called him “Big Sam.” I told him he even had an Italian name and he was welcome here. Big Sam liked that a lot.
I stood on a chair at the front and spoke into a little P.A. system we had installed a few years before. I don’t remember why we put it in there but it had come in handy more than a few times.
I cleared my throat. Suddenly it hit me what I was about to say and I got emotional. “Ummm...this is a special day for all of us. Today is a day that I don’t think my grandfather Giuseppe would have ever believed would come. My dad certainly didn’t expect it. I sort of thought it would come in my life time.” I paused here. It felt like I was stalling saying the most important part. In times like this I found it was best to just let it fly.
“Last week we received an impressive offer for Mezilli Trash Hauling and Cartage...” I paused one last time; this was harder than I thought. “We decided it was too good an offer to pass up, and so we took it.” My voice choked. It hit me again what I was saying. Then it really hit me how much I loved these people, and how much a family we really were. A loud murmur quickly spread through the group. I needed to reassure them right away. “Listen...” I said clearing my throat again, “Before I give you any details, you need to know that after tonight, you will not have to be concerned about your future, no matter what the new management decides.” They grew quickly quiet. I motioned to Angie to hand me my briefcase. She opened it and stood next to me and handed me a few of the envelopes inside. I smiled at her. I was glad she was by my side for this.
“You guys are my family.” I continued, “Some of you have been here since Zippie was still coming to the office. More than half of you were hired by my dad.” I turned and smiled at the Old Man. He was crying openly, not even trying in the least to hide his tears. “We’ve been to your weddings, and celebrated the birth of your children...” I sputtered and began to cry. I had to get through this somehow. I lowered the microphone for a second and Angie brought me a shot of anisette. That helped me a bit. I raised my head to look at my guys and now they were crying too. Oh Maddonn, this was going to be tough.
I blew out a long breath and pressed on. “Anyway I have never thought of myself as your boss...we’re family. You guys gave us your best, day in and day out and so my dad and I decided that it was only right that you share in the blessings. Because we are very blessed, you guys.” I felt better now, maybe because as I was speaking these words, the force of them was warming my soul. I went on, “We have seen dark days and mostly bright ones. We’ve never had a major injury. Never had a cutback. We haven’t had to borrow money from the bank in seventeen years. We’ve been just a very fortunate group of people, and now it’s time for the chapter to close.”
I swallowed hard and looked at their faces. I really, truly loved these people. “So here’s what we’ve done. I have taken your current salary and multiplied it by the number of years you’ve been with us, up to fifteen years. Those of you who have been here less than five years I multiplied it by five anyway. Whatever that number is, each of you will be receiving that amount, in one lump sum, as a bonus.” A roar and a cheer went up like Ryan Howard had just hit a Grand Slam. They were laughing and clapping and slapping each other on their backs. It went on like this for a moment. Then the strangest thing happened. One by one, as the reality of what I had just told them was settling on their hearts, they got very quiet, and the cheers turned to sniffles and gentle tears. The truth of what I was telling them started to become reality and they were considering how big a gift this was. They were overwhelmed.
I stepped down from the chair and together with Angie, walked over to stand by my mom and dad. And then they started. To a man, every one of my guys, their wives and their kids came over to us and hugged us. They told us how much they appreciated this, that we didn’t have to do this and nobody else would have done this. Our tears mingled with theirs and we smiled and laughed as we cried. After a few minutes I excused myself and stood back on the chair and took the microphone again.
“Hey everyone,” I croaked, I want to do one more thing, and then you guys can each come over and get your envelope. There are some papers inside with the specifics of what we’re doing here and an agreement for you to sign.” I paused and searched the crowd for Khalif. Our eyes locked. “Khalif! Khalif come up here for a minute. Bring your family with you please. You too Big Sam!” Khalif dutifully made his way through the crowd with his young wife and their two daughters. Khalif and his wife stood next to me and I put my arm around his shoulder. “Guys...” I began, “We have all come to love Khalif, you know?”
The guys let out a roar. “Most of you know that Khalif and his wife just gained their citizenship last month after so many years.” Again my guys roared in approval. I went on, “Now I don’t know if Waste International is going to keep using Khalif for cleaning the rigs or not, so I included him in this celebration tonight and we did something especially for him.” Khalif’s face went white. He had no idea that he was being included in this. He merely thought he was here for the party. I motioned to Angie and she handed me a large manila envelope and then she came and stood next to Khalif’s wife and held her hand.
I looked at Khalif, “You are the hardest working young man I know. You are better at your job than you need to be and we appreciate what you have done for us, Khalif. You’re part of this family now.” Khalif’s eyes grew misty and he smiled sheepishly. I opened the envelope and pulled out a blue-backed bundle of legal papers. I turned to look at him and smiled. “Khalif,” I said, “This is the title deed to your house. My dad and I called the mortgage company yesterday and your note is paid in full. It’s all yours.”
Khalif’s hand went to his eyes. His shoulders shook and his wife was sobbing on Angie’s shoulder. Big Sam ran to me and gave me a giant hug. My guys roared and clapped. The women cried and so did some of the men. That was always the Mezilli Way. We took good care of each other and that was the best way to go out...arm in arm.
We stayed late into the evening. I told the guys not to worry too much about the routes in the morning. “Just get them done and get back here safely.” I said. “Life goes on and we still have a service to provide.” We stayed a long time. Nobody really wanted to leave. In some ways it felt like once we broke up the party and went home, the life of Mezilli Trash Hauling and Cartage was over forever. Like the scene in Field of Dreams when Moonlight Graham crosses the foul line and reverts back into Dr. Graham, never to return. I think in our hearts, every man there wished we could have stayed right there in that moment forever. But we couldn’t. Time never stands still.
4
The Long
Goodbye
The rest of the week was a blur after that night. Meetings. Planning. Lawyers. Amendments to language. More meetings. More planning. June came and my kids were almost out of school, and I was antsy for this thing to be over with. I called Richard Green and told him what I would like my summer schedule to be. He was fine with what I asked for. I could leave Friday’s at noon and take a total of four weeks off before September when the kids went back to school. That was good enough for me. It was hard to accept that I was technically an employee now. I had a contract to fulfill and I was determined to do the very best I could.
I did my job dutifully for the twelve months I was under contract. Angie had bought a big desk-blotter sized calendar and hung it inside the pantry door. Every day she would cross out another day in red marker. The date was circled in blue with stars drawn around it. May fourteenth next year and I would be finished with my lame-duck presidency at Mezilli Trash Hauling and Cartage. I would walk out the door that day with a few cardboard bo
xes full of mementos from my office and they’d be switching out the signs as I walked past. I imagined a locksmith changing the locks before I even started my truck. The corporate world is not one for emotion or sentiment.
It’s funny; you can fall into a series of routines in life and never realize things all around you. Sometime around Christmas that last year I was with our company, we both started noticing things about the neighborhood. It was changing. Crime had never been an issue here. This was “Little Italy” and the neighbors were always watching out for each other and that kept things straight. We had men like Giuseppe and his friends, and then Uncle Tony and the second generation sort of ran things the same way as Nonno’s generation did. But lately -the last five years or so- things were different. It used to be that a kid grew up on the block, and his dream was to buy a house here and stay here and raise his kids the same as he’d been raised. But not anymore. More and more of my friends were leaving and almost all of the kids younger than us were choosing the suburbs. Angie and I couldn’t imagine not buying food at Martini’s market, hoagies at DiCostanza’s or Italian Ice from the Feretti’s on the next block.
But it was happening. There was a diaspora of South Philly families, leaving their homeland and venturing to the uncharted adventure of the ‘burbs. Anj and I swore we never could do this, but by Christmas of that last year, we were talking about it all the time. Nonna was slowing down and we knew she wouldn’t be around forever. The Old Man and my mom were rooted in like an old fig tree and they were never going to leave. Uncle Franny was Homer...no chance he’d ever vacate. Same for Uncle Tony. The neighborhood would always be well represented by the Mezilli’s. But Angie and I were growing restless. I wanted my kids to have land and see mountains and breathe fresh air. I wanted some room between me and my next door neighbors. Selling our house and moving away had never even been thought of before. Now we thought about it all the time.
Nothing big happened to make us take the step. None of my kids got sick. Nobody broke into my house. In fact, Anj and I would have been fine there because of who we were and who my family is. But my kids certainly won’t be buying a house in the neighborhood and that sort of cemented it for us. If the kids won’t be here, I sure won’t be retiring here. So Angie and I quietly started thinking about where we might go.
We had been thinking about the South because we knew land was still readily available and reasonably priced. Then too, I didn’t want to move more than a day’s drive or a couple of hours flying time from home. My folks were in their late sixties –certainly not old, but getting to that point where things start to happen with their health- and so I wanted to be close enough that they would feel okay driving to see us as well.
October of that first year after I sold, I went to homecoming with Angie. The kids went with us because it was a big deal. I attended Liberty University where I played men’s hockey. In fact, my freshman year was the very first team we had. The year I sold the business, the Hockey Alumni were holding a special celebration at Homecoming to commemorate twenty-five years of hockey at LU. Angie and I took the kids out of school a day early and drove to Lynchburg where the school is located. We had a lot of friends there and wanted the extra time to visit outside of the scheduled events of Homecoming weekend.
Driving from Philadelphia to Lynchburg Virginia is tedious until you get beyond Washington DC. There is a point on Highway Twenty-Nine South where you round a bend and you get your first glimpse of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. It’s a remarkable sight if you aren’t familiar with mountains. My kids had never seen mountains at all. We were beach people for vacation and the boys were always so busy with hockey in the winter that we didn’t go skiing. When we rounded that bend, and those mountains rose out of the south, contrasting the flatland we’d driven through, my kids were all agape. Emily, my daughter, pointed out the window and said “Daddy, are those real?” I looked at Angie and she smiled her “I just read your mind” smile. “Yeah baby...” I answered Emily, “Those are the Blue Ridge Mountains. They run from here to Tennessee where they become the Smokies.” “They’re so beautiful daddy.” Emily said. She was right.
The Homecoming weekend was such a busy few days that Angie and I didn’t have much time to talk about what we were both thinking. I knew she was thinking it, and she knew I was thinking it. “What about moving down here?” The kids had a blast in Lynchburg. The boys were fascinated with the “SnowFlex” slopes on Liberty Mountain and Emily loved the art gallery on campus. She is the artist in the family. She sees the beauty in everything and everybody. That weekend was special for her, because there is so much beauty in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
We got back to Philly on Tuesday morning after Homecoming. I went to the office at lunchtime and called a realtor friend of mine in Lynchburg who was the wife of the hockey coach. I told her to start looking for some houses for Angie and I to consider. Yes we were thinking about a move to the area. Yes we were serious. I told her we wanted a fair sized house, maybe five-thousand square feet. A few acres of land. Commuting distance from Lynchburg. She said she’d start on it right away and email us some properties.
After dinner that night, Angie and I sat on our back porch. The boys were doing homework inside and Emmy was drawing pictures at the kitchen table. I could see her framed by the doorway to the porch where Anj and I sat and talked. She handed me a sketch pad. “What’s this?” I asked her. “Look through it, Joe.” She said. It was Emily’s. We’d bought it for her before the Homecoming trip. She’d been drawing in it almost non- stop while we were there. I thumbed through it. It was full. One-hundred sheets, both sides, all pictures of the mountains, the campus, Smith Mountain Lake. The pictures were amazing for a six year old, but what struck me was how this trip affected her. All she could draw for days was mountains. Emily had fallen in love with the place.
“She asked me when I tucked her in last night could we go back there this weekend.” Angie told me. “She said she wants to live there.” I was surprised. Emily was the one I thought would resist the idea if we decided to move away.
She loved having her Nanna and Nonno three blocks away. My dad doted on Emmy because she was the first granddaughter. My brothers had all boys and I’ve already explained what Angie and I went through having a girl ourselves. Apparently the Mezilli men have a problem “knocking the nuts off” as my cousin Jimmy likes to say. Eventually my brother Sam and his wife had a little girl, but Emily had already stolen my dad’s heart by then. He loved Louise (My niece) but Emmy had her Nonno around her finger. She even has him singing to her. Hand-to-God! The old man has absolutely no vocal range. He couldn’t hum the theme song from Jaws. But Emily taught him “The Wheels on the Bus” when she was in pre-school and she had him sitting cross-legged on the floor singing and going through the hand motions with her. I have it on video somewhere. Thank God for cell-phone cameras, right?
“Well I have Jannie working on it for us, Babe.” I told Angie. She looked at me with a smile. “Already?” she said coyly. “Yeah, I called her this morning from the office. She’s going to send you stuff through the email. I told her four-to-five-thousand square feet and a few acres. Other than that, it’s your call.” Angie smirked at me over her coffee cup. “Oh sure, Joseph, heave that decision on my shoulders.” She laughed. She knew that I knew that she was the one who had to like the house. All I needed was a basement, a big garage and a place to grow tomatoes. The rest was her domain. Except for the kitchen. I was a legendary cook in the neighborhood and so was Anj. The kitchen was the one part of the house that we put a lot of cooperative thought into. We worked well together in the kitchen too. We made it fun to prepare for parties, or cook breakfast for the kids. Our friends always said we should have a cooking show together.
Angie and I talked for an hour about moving to Virginia. It felt odd talking about moving away from the homestead. It felt very odd to be speaking of one specific location as if we’d already decided to move there. I stood up and grabbed her coffee
mug. “You want a refill?” I asked her. “Of course, babe,” She smiled. Then she started to laugh, “You’re going to get your legal pad, right?” That’s my Angie, she knows me better than I know myself. I am a notorious side-byside-comparison guy. I’m a big believer in the age-old method of drawing a line down the middle of a legal pad and listing “Pro” on one side and “Con” on the other. Always “Pro” along the left edge...so you see it first. Because I’m an optimist.
“I’ll be right back,” I laughed. I took her cup into the kitchen, checked on Emmy’s drawings at the table and kissed her forehead. She was drawing mountains. In fact she’d drawn “The Bald Spot” on Liberty Mountain. The Bald spot got its name because every spring, lightning would strike up there and burn a few hundred acres. It always looked bald where the fires had been. Eventually the school cleared it out, put down tons of landscape stone and put in a shrubbery monogram. You can see the “LU” from miles away. “It’s very good, Emmy” I told her, “It looks just like the Bald Spot!” Emily laughed. I had told her that the students called it that and she thought it was funny. I grabbed a yellow pad from my briefcase and refilled Angie’s coffee mug. I grabbed bottled water from the refrigerator and headed back to the porch.
The Legend of Joey Trucks: The Accidental Mobster Page 7