XML Feeds
* Scouting through the Summer of '67
Chuck joined the Boy Scouts as soon as he'd turned eleven. He couldn’t wait to join because his brothers George and Bill had already been Boy Scouts for a couple years, and every time they’d gone camping, it just killed Chuck to watch them pack their backpacks, roll their sleeping bags, and head off with the rest of the troop.
They belonged to a troop that had over twenty-five years of history in Cleveland, but by the time Chuck had joined they were fairly dysfunctional and were facing the threat of losing their charter because they had no Troop Leader. Despite their problems, Troop 34 was still were allowed to hold “meetings” in the neighborhood Baptist church each Tuesday night at 7 p.m. because one of the older guys belonged to that church.
Somehow Troop 34 always managed to scrape together some adult who would act as a leader to take them camping, and it was usually an alumnus member of the troop, until one day out of the blue, Troop 34 found Harold Fotkowski, who everybody called Footy. He was a real, live, full-time, chartered leader in his mid-thirties, and had a passion for camping and the Scouts. Footy was cool for an “old guy” and brought stability and improvements to the troop.
For the second summer in a row, Footy arranged for Troop 34 to have their annual weeklong summer camp at the Clendening Boy Scout Reservation in southern Ohio. Their campsite was a rustic clearing in a forest of young maples and tall oaks, had a covered shelter with three picnic tables, a fire pit outside the shelter, a hand-driven water pump, and a wooden outhouse set at the far end of the clearing. About a half mile down the gravel road was the main camp office where the tough and fit, Camp Director Thomas Hazzard lived and reigned as head-honcho and chief despot.
The muscular and super-tanned Hazzard also ran the waterfront which was on the beautiful Clendening Lake where the scouts swam, fished and canoed. Each day the troops could reserve private swimming and boating sessions on top of the daily open swim each afternoon, and on the second day, Footy had arranged 34’s first crack at the canoes for 11 a.m.
* Chuck's Saturday Night Fever
Back in the 70’s, Chuck had moved to Florida, but most of his friends, and all of his family were still in Cleveland, Ohio. On one visit up north, Chuck’s brothers and their group of friends planned to all meet one Saturday night at a posh rooftop club downtown.
The nightclub was in a high-rise building and the elevator going up was filled with well-dressed disco-goers in silk printed shirts and tight, very tight pants. When the elevator door parted, it opened to a huge expanse of plush carpeting, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sparkling Cleveland skyline. Just beyond the elevator "vestibule" was an endless snaking table-height bar with low, swiveling, leather chair-stools. The dance floor was packed with Hustlers bathed in a swarming kaleidoscope of colored spotlights.
They found three or four seats at the bar they could claim as theirs, and through a series of smooth rotation amongst themselves, they had found their "Home Base" for the night. Chuck's brother George knew the bartender which meant that the drinks they were buying were anything but weak. Chuck ordered Drambuie, a new found favorite of his. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Drambuie, it's a liqueur made from a mixture of scotch and honey, and has a combination of burning sweetness. On the rocks it goes down fairly smoothly.
* 11 / 22 / 63
The year was 1963, and Chuck Bamata was ten years old. He was in Miss Baker’s 5th Grade class at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Cleveland, Ohio. Miss Baker was an ancient spinster whose best pal seemed to be the equally ancient Miss Richardson. On that day, the class was in their afternoon session, with a little more than an hour to go, and it was like any other day until something strange happened.
Miss Richardson, the Sixth Grade teacher interrupted the class, whispered something to Miss Baker and the two teachers left the room abruptly. The class erupted into curious chitter-chatter until the door reopened, and Miss Baker came back into the room crying.
Chuck and his classmates sat wide-eyed and wondering, as they watched her fumbling with her hanky, trying to compose herself. She sat down at her desk wiping her red eyes, and just looked at the class silently, as if searching for the words.
Sitting directly in front of the teacher’s desk was the teacher’s pet, Karen Kowalski who finally asked her what was wrong. Miss Baker’s eyes scanned around, taking in the whole class in a single second glance. She took a deep breath in, but her crying stuttered the intake of air.
She wiped here eyes one more time and said quietly, “Class, something terrible has happened.” She took another stuttered breath, and finally told thirty-four ten-year-olds the terrible news. “The President has been assassinated.”
Chuck and his classmates knew that it was bad, but weren’t sure about the word with “ass” in it. Miss Baker must have noticed the blank looks, because she elaborated for them, “The President was shot and killed.” Her tears began flowing again.
Like most ten year olds, Chuck’s sole exposure to death was in westerns and war movies. In his mind, he saw President Kennedy in a dusty street, drawing pistols against a bad guy, who oddly enough looked like Nikita Kruschev. The bald Russian shot first, and Kennedy grabbed for his stomach in pain, falling to the dirt.
Tommy Crespett made some smart comment that Chuck couldn't make out. But Miss Baker surely had, along with the giggles of all his immediate neighbors. She went off on him like a hungry cat on a crippled mouse, and sent him to stand in the cloakroom, the standard punishment for misdemeanors like talking in class.
She chided Tommy for his crime, and made him an example of shame, "Tommy, when you’re grown up, you can one day tell your children in shame, that you were sent to the cloakroom for punishment, on the day President Kennedy was killed.” Tommy Crespett looked sick.
* Chuck almost loses his head
In 1972, after a summer of partying on Put-in-Bay Island, Chuck Bamata went back to Cleveland and needed a job for the winter. His brother Georgie’s friend Tommy suggested he come to the place he was working.
The next day, Chuck was hired at a small machine shop in Bedford, Ohio which made specialty wrenches for plumbers. The pride of their product line was their Basin Wrench. In Chuck’s mind, the best part about the job was that the pay was decent, it wasn’t in the steel mills, and he didn’t have to get his long hair cut. The owner’s one requirement was that you had to pull it back in a ponytail.
* Chuck Passes a Lie-Detector Test
In 1981 Chuck Bamata applied for a job for which he would have to take a polygraph test. The primary reason for the test was to weed out thieves and drug addicts. Chuck wasn't worried about being labeled a thief, because even though he and his friends had shop-lifted a couple Hostess cupcakes from a neighborhood corner store, he had never stolen a lot or anything that could be considered valued at more than thirty or forty cents. Stealing was something that Chuck never got any satisfaction from, and even those cupcakes had left a bad taste in his mouth. If he couldn't earn it legitimately he didn't want it.
However, he had smoked plenty of reefer and had taken some acid in his life. But Chuck needed the job and didn't feel that the joints he had smoked should disqualify him from making an honest living, so he decided to try and beat the test. At the time, his friend Chewey was staying with him, and even better, Chewey of all people had beaten the same test.
* Eyes crossed and T's dotted
By the time Chuck Bamata had reached two, his parents had noticed that he was cross-eyed in one eye. With no consideration for the expense, Chuck’s father and mother took him to a local Cleveland Ophthalmologist dozens of times, and had him in his first pair of glasses by age three.
Determined to correct the problem, Mr. B found out about a new surgical procedure that could correct the problem permanently. It would require a trip to Chicago to visit a specialist, who would then determine if the procedure would be suitable for Chuck’s condition.
In 1959, at age six, Chuck was admitted to Deaconess Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, to have a muscle shortened in one eye, in an attempt to correct the position of his pupil. He was anesthetized with ether on a handful of cotton, and it was the first time in his life he ever experienced life fading away in a spiraling world of wee-wee-wah-wahs.
* Boot-hopping with Chuck
Chuck Bamata lived in a residential neighborhood that was a crisscross of streets with middle-class homes built in the 1920’s on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. Winters in Cleveland were long and cold, but kids growing up there didn’t stay indoors, and they were able to get into just as much trouble when the snows fell as in the days of summer. As a teenager, Chuck had grown from building snowmen and snow forts as a child, to wild neighborhood-wide snowball fights, to boot-hopping.
Warning: Boot-hopping and doing doughnuts are dangerous. Do not try this at home!
* Chuck's condiment list
con•di•ment
n. A substance, such as a relish, vinegar, or spice, used to flavor or complement foodAmerican Heritage Dictionary at http://www.dictionary.com
You might think that to talk about condiments is a waste of time, but during the span of an average lifetime, it is a choice that you’ll make well over 75,000 times. So, in light of the importance such decisions have on the quality of our lives, Chuck has thought long and hard over his favorite condiments, and insisted that they be included as part of his “true story”.
* The Poor Sap-ling
When the summer of 1972 rolled around, Chuck Bamata and his best friend Barry excitedly prepared to go up to Put-in-Bay, a small summer resort island, about ninety miles west of Cleveland, Oho, along the shores of Lake Erie. It was to be their second full summer of partying on the island, and they had decided to be independent, and have a place of their own, instead of crashing around from cottage to cottage as they had the year before. Money was tight and seasonal rentals on the island were high, if you could find one, but they had one ace-in -the-hole, the state park.
They had stayed there several weeks the summer before, and it was the cheapest option on the island at about five bucks a day. Chuck had a bought brand new rip-stop nylon pup tent, and Barry being way over six feet, had a canvas family-style tent for extra space.
* Chuck sneaks into CSN&Y
The Plan
In the summer of 1970, Chuck Bamata had learned that a friend of a friend from school had a ticket to get into the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young concert, and he would be able to get them in for free. Chuck’s friend had told him that the guy knew the way through the City of Cleveland’s underground tunnel system which linked the Public Auditorium and Music Hall with the County Courthouse across the street.
Chuck’s friend Jerry had assured him that it was a piece of cake once you got into the tunnels, he claimed to have done it twice before. The plan was to meet Jerry behind the Courthouse at 6:30 p.m. The guy was going to go backwards from inside the concert hall, through the tunnels to open a basement door from the inside, and then it was just a matter of following Jerry through the tunnels, under the street, and into the Public Auditorium seating area. By the way Jerry had explained to Chuck, it sounded like a walk in the park, a sure thing. Chuck wanted to see the concert, had no money, and he figured he had nothing to lose on an otherwise dead Saturday night in Cleveland, Ohio.