I'm a wreck.
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I duck when someone points their finger while giving me directions. I think people I love are going to hit me when they innocently move a limb towards me. I scare myself when I sneeze.
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Some of this started with the TV volume growing up. Dad liked to watch TV loud, and stay up late to watch old movies on Channel 5 & 9. Mom and Rory got used to it. They both could sleep through a war. I never got used to it and walked around in a coma from 
sleep deprivation.
sleep deprivation.
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Mom and Dad's relationship was like a functional alcoholic, they got through the day but there were casualties. Usually Rory and me from their verbal bouts. That pushed me around the corner to my father's mother's apartment on York Avenue.
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I lost a portion of my hearing up Nan's nut house. She loved lots of company, playing pinochle and pokeno, loud TV, Guy Lombardo & Kate Smith music, and she had a $100 telephone bill in 1965, twice her rent cost, staying up to midnight every night yakking away doing her politics.
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Nan was the only person I knew who if she was speaking in her apartment, 
her voice volume could wash out the horrible theme music 
coming from the Mister Softee truck. She'd be saying something then stop, and I'd hear the Mister Softee truck a block away. I completely missed its appearance in front of our house.
her voice volume could wash out the horrible theme music 
coming from the Mister Softee truck. She'd be saying something then stop, and I'd hear the Mister Softee truck a block away. I completely missed its appearance in front of our house.
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But the main reason, my nerves are shot is my perpetual proximity to demolition and construction.
But the main reason, my nerves are shot is my perpetual proximity to demolition and construction.
It started on 83rd Street when they demolished 515, right next to my building, 517,and put up an ugly gray building that took three years to complete. Mom caught Rory and me walking across a fourth floor beam during early construction, and for once, I absolutely remember getting hit and fully understood why, even though I blamed Rory forever because Mom couldn't see us on the beam but called our names out the back window.
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"Tommy?"
No answer.
"Rory, are you there?"
"Hi, Mom."
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When 515 came down, no lead or asbestos team was on hand, just a crane and a huge concrete ball taking whole brick and plaster walls down smack after smack. A cloud of dust rose over the block and stayed there for hours. It was a cool thing to watch a wrecking ball in action, except when it was destroying the building next to yours. I secretly hoped the ball would miss 515 and go through the third floor window of 517 and hit Mr. Toledo in the head. Cheap bastard didn't tip me when I delivered his Sunday Daily News..
When 515 came down, no lead or asbestos team was on hand, just a crane and a huge concrete ball taking whole brick and plaster walls down smack after smack. A cloud of dust rose over the block and stayed there for hours. It was a cool thing to watch a wrecking ball in action, except when it was destroying the building next to yours. I secretly hoped the ball would miss 515 and go through the third floor window of 517 and hit Mr. Toledo in the head. Cheap bastard didn't tip me when I delivered his Sunday Daily News..
When I was 10, at St. Stephen's of 
Hungary, they pulverized a perfectly good rectory next to our school, and put a new one up. Three years of noise and dust on our desks and in our eyes and ears. In 1964 when they knocked something down, they just knocked it down. No water, no brick by brick, the wrecking ball came in and everybody had a big old party watching the ball raze a building in a few days.
Hungary, they pulverized a perfectly good rectory next to our school, and put a new one up. Three years of noise and dust on our desks and in our eyes and ears. In 1964 when they knocked something down, they just knocked it down. No water, no brick by brick, the wrecking ball came in and everybody had a big old party watching the ball raze a building in a few days.
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After St. Stephen's, they leveled the lovely & old Church of the Nativity on Second Avenue in the East Village and built a modern horror right next to LaSalle Academy my high school. I thought I had Parkinson's due to the involuntary shaking I developed 
because our classes were right next to the party wall we shared with the new church. I flinched all the time, my girlfriend loved it.
because our classes were right next to the party wall we shared with the new church. I flinched all the time, my girlfriend loved it.
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After high school, Hunter College began a major expansion effort by tearing buildings down across the street from the Hunter High School Building shown in the picture here.
After high school, Hunter College began a major expansion effort by tearing buildings down across the street from the Hunter High School Building shown in the picture here.
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After college, I worked on William Street where they ripped up the streets over and over again ~ eight years of torturous jackhammering.
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I was three blocks from the WTC North Tower when it was bombed in 1993 and when it collapsed in Sept 2001.
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Now I work at 90 Church Street surrounded by 360 degrees of demolition and construction. The World Trade Center site is right outside my window, they're demolishing a college building on Greenwich Street out the other window, a new sixty-story building (it also replaced a rectory) went up next to St. Peter's Church and they foolishly destructed the Deco Art quality Dun & Bradstreet building on Church Street that is being replaced by a ninety-story Silverstein monster.
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Someone told me, "You'll have peace when you're in your grave." Hope so, but I'm not counting on it..
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