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Blogs by Joseph W. Montaperto
The Edge of Whiteness 10/31/2014 7:36:11 PM
Go back in time and become immersed in early 1970's Roselle, New Jersey as Joey and the Montaperto family escape the race riots of Brooklyn for the "greener" pastures of the suburbs only to experience the racial integration of his high school, and the explosive, often hilarious stories that result from all this! I am now OFFICIALLY convinced that the last time things in this country were still kind of free-wheeling and somewhat unstructured was the 1970's. Particularly the early-mid 70's. Before it morphed into "Corporate World".
I think that may have been the last time you didn't have to be a robot. Especially if you were a kid - more specifically a kid growing up in a northern New Jersey suburb. You didn't have to be a (social) media creation. You could still be mischievous, cause a little chaos, and it was really no big deal.You could ride your bike to (what you thought) were far away towns, play baseball and touch football on the side streets, hang out at Cumberland Farms at night and so on. In short, you could be a kid. You could also still break into houses - not to really steal anything - but to have a little fun. Like eating all the raisins out of somebody's box of Raisin Bran, seal the packaging and boxtop up again and put it back in the same exact spot. Can you imagine that now, with all the high-tech security systems and devices houses are equipped with now?!
VIPER! STAND BACK! THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY VIPER! DANGER! DANGER!
You would immediately be arrested and branded a terrorist, then be interned for the rest of your life at Guantanamo Bay, or some place like that. What happened to the innocence? My cousin Skinny and I would do just that we broke into this same family's house every Saturday and ate all the raisins out of their Raisin Bran - for like a year! Yet, they continued to buy Raisin Bran every week from the A&P! Of course, now we had to spy on them while they were eating dinner to find out what they though of it. It was freakin' hilarious! Oh, and the kid was one of our best friends and we would pick him up for church every Sunday - while his father was pouring the raisinless bran into his cereal bowl. Ah, how I miss the good ole days!
