Memoir of a Real Life Archives - Page 13 of 20

The Secret to Winning: Look for Patterns of Success

By Chris Carosa on February 20, 2018

Would you like to know the secret to winning? It’s a system you can easily learn. It works every time. There’s only one trick. I’m guessing you already know what it is.

I’m a Frank Sinatra fan. That means, like any other Sinatra enthusiast, the song “My Way” inspires. (You can read my thoughts on that in “Ruling the World My Way.”) I thank my parents for this, for it was listening to their records that convinced me the Hoboken Hero deserved my attention.

Of course, I was born too late to experience Old Blue Eyes at his vintage best, but I was Continue Reading “The Secret to Winning: Look for Patterns of Success”

Posted in Business Tips, Memoir of a Real Life Tagged active listening, cell phone tower, crowdsourcing, Danny Neaverth, Frank Sinatra, Hoboken, Mendon Town Board, My Way, Sandy Beach, The Beatles, WKBW, WYBC, Yale

Carl Foss (1927-2018): Remembrance of a True Community Ideal

By Chris Carosa on January 16, 2018

Communities are not defined by mere words and platitudes of the chattering class. Though they endure through the dedication of their residents, communities only attain lasting permanence through tangible structures. These include both physical and philosophical constructs people can rally around. They are forged by the grand ideas from the active minds of singular individuals. Carl Foss was one of those individuals. He thought big, achieved big, and left us all with a better community. He represents an ideal we should all strive for.

The following is a personal remembrance. As such, it reflects only my feelings, limited as they are, on the impact this great man had on his community.

I don’t remember the first time I met Carl Foss. I do remember his reputation preceded our actually meeting. It was the late 1980s. I was just getting involved in the Town of Mendon. Jack Leckie, then Town Supervisor, told me I should get to know Carl Foss. At the time, Carl was the Chairman of the Zoning Board. I had zero interest in Zoning, but I had heard Carl was quite knowledgeable about the subject – and he took it quite seriously.

Again, I don’t remember when I first met him, but I do remember I was immediately Continue Reading “Carl Foss (1927-2018): Remembrance of a True Community Ideal”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Arlene Cluff, Bill Fletcher, Carl Foss, Chuck Meisenzahl, Dick Dehm, Jack Leckie, Jeanne Loberg, Lucy Parsons, Mendon Foundation, Mendon Station Park, Mendon Town Board, Pack 105, Rochester Junction, St. Catherine's, Troop 105, Warren Wallace

Old-Time Hockey Meets New Era Field

By Chris Carosa on January 9, 2018

In a stadium half filled with distinct Canadian accents, I overheard the following comment: “It doesn’t snow like this during football games.” Obviously, that visitor wasn’t present just a few weeks earlier for the Blizzard Game against the Colts (see “Live from the 2017 Buffalo Bills Snow Bowl,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, December 14, 2017).

This night, however, wasn’t a football game, it was a hockey game. And not just any regular hockey game, it was an outdoor Continue Reading “Old-Time Hockey Meets New Era Field”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries, Western New York State of Mind Tagged Buffalo, Canada, Dit Clapper, Eddie Shore, hockey, New Era Field, Orchard Park, snow, Snow Belt, Toe Blake, USA, World Juniors

Live from the 2017 Buffalo Bills Snow Bowl

By Chris Carosa on December 12, 2017

Photo courtesy of Catarina Lena Carosa

Unless you grew up on the western shores of Lake Erie, it’s kinda hard to describe just exactly what “lake effect” conjures up in the brain. I was reminded of this last Friday, when I traveled once more to the land of my youth. I left merry old Mendon with nary a hint of the white stuff anywhere to be found. By the time I had arrive in Amherst ninety minutes later, the mushy roads were only then being plowed. In three hours – smack dab in the middle of the morning rush hour – a devilish lake effect band targeted the North Towns of Buffalo.

I was “lucky” enough to be there before the plows to witness first hand the blissful blessing of the new fallen snow. It was Christmas card perfect. Pristine and sparkly, with the look of a soft blanket, it almost took me back to those fuzzy days of yore, but then I Continue Reading “Live from the 2017 Buffalo Bills Snow Bowl”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries, Western New York State of Mind Tagged Abbott Road, Blasdell, Buffalo Bills, Christmas, hamburg, Ilio DiPaolo's, Indianapolis Colts, Jack Nicholson, Lackawanna, lake effect, Lake Erie, New Era Field, Orchard Park, Pepsi, The Shining, thundersnow

Why I’m Thankful for The Sandlot

By Chris Carosa on November 21, 2017

Take a step out into the fall air. There’s a faint rustle in the stillness. Falling leaves flutter to the Earth’s floor. Their slow decomposition releases an arousing aroma. It’s the smell of autumn. It’s the smell of coming things. It’s the smell of football.

There comes a time in the late school day afternoon, when the homework is finished, that the smell beckons. When this siren calls, the boys come out.

Or at least they used to. There was once an age, well before organized youth sports, when neighborhood boys would regularly convene. Together, they would decide the game, the boundaries, and the rules. Then they’d play. Sometimes deep into the darkness. The score never mattered. The camaraderie did.Continue Reading “Why I’m Thankful for The Sandlot”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Dortmund Circle, football, Thanksgiving

If You’re Not Guilty, Don’t Act Like It

By Chris Carosa on November 7, 2017

Previous: A Bully Tactic: Give Them Something To Deny

In elementary school we walked a half mile each day to the bus stop at the top of the street. There were about twenty kids at that bus stop (this was during the peak baby boomer years, so it wasn’t unusual for one street to produce twenty elementary school kids). There were two sets of boys. The older boys and us (me, my brother Kenny, my best friend Angelo and his brother Markie). There was also this quite younger boy, Johnny, who desperately wanted to be like us (not the older boys, for even he realized that was too much a leap). We shunned him, as older kids are wont to do with younger kids, but we didn’t bully him like the older boys did to us (to see how I ultimately defeated these bullies – without any need for physical violence – see “Terror at the School Bus Stop – A True Life Story,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, January 11, 1990). As a result, Continue Reading “If You’re Not Guilty, Don’t Act Like It”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Abbott Parkway, Angelo, bully, Kenny, lessons learned, Markie, Nixon, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense

A Bully Tactic: Give Them Something to Deny

By Chris Carosa on October 31, 2017

If you knew me in high school, you’d know I engaged in a never-ending battle against AP English. It’s ironic, then, that my most thoughtful memories of high school come from those very classes I disdained. This story begins with one of those memories.

I don’t remember the context, but I do remember the lesson. It may have been during our review and analysis of The Scarlett Letter, where guilt is a major theme. The teacher, Mr. Polito, wrote on the board the following phrase: “Give them something to deny.”

This bewildered most of the class. He then mentioned it as an allusion to a made-for-TV movie thinly disguised to mimic the events surrounding Watergate. With Washington DC as its political backdrop, the movie’s antagonist was asked repeatedly how to defeat an Continue Reading “A Bully Tactic: Give Them Something to Deny”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged AP English, Hamlet, Jonny Fontane, Mr. Polito, Psy-Ops, Shakespeare, The Godfather, The Manchurian Candidate, Vito Corleone, Watergate

Back in the Saddle Again!

By Chris Carosa on September 12, 2017

Ah, the joys of sitting atop the multiple horse equivalent of internal combustion, casually doing ovals around a track of flowing (and growing) green. Now that the boy is safely ensconced in university environs (if you can call doing a term project in Panama “safe”), I am now able to return to my weekly therapy. Others may call this a chore, but I look forward to mowing the lawn and the wonderful thoughts awaiting me as I go round and round from here and back again.

Besides, to paraphrase Robert Duvall’s Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, “I love the smell of freshly cut grass in the morning” (or afternoon, whatever the case may be). And while Francis Ford Coppola may have been calling his inner Joseph Conrad while making Apocalypse Now, I can’t help but call my own inner Gene Autry as I mount up and ride Continue Reading “Back in the Saddle Again!”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Apocalype Now, Colonel Bill Kilgore, Don Adams, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Autry, Harry Callahan, Homily, John Deere, Joseph Conrad, Magnum Force, Maxwell Smart, Robert Duvall

Solar Eclipse, 1970 – A True Story

By Chris Carosa on August 15, 2017

Saturday, March 7, 1970 – Leisure Lanes, Camp Road, Hamburg, New York. I’ll never forget that day. It was the first time I remember having to make a very difficult choice. It was a wrenching choice. It was an agonizing choice. It was the kind of choice no one ever expects a nine-year old boy to have to face.

Yet I did. And I can blame no one for it except for myself, the expectations I had placed on myself, and the subsequent expectations I had encouraged others to, well, expect of me. Nonetheless, the way I approached the decision appears, in retrospect, to have become the template I have since used for all such future conundrums.

By that point in the latter half of fourth grade, I had become the de facto astronomer of the class. Yes, there was actually a competition of this exalted position, and I was determined Continue Reading “Solar Eclipse, 1970 – A True Story”

Posted in Boy Scouts, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged astronomy, Big Tree Cub Scout Pack 489, Big Tree Elementary, bowling, bowling trophy, Christopher Columbus, Cub Scout, Cub Scouts, Eclipse of the Century, fourth grade, Galileo Galilei, hamburg, Hans Lippershey, Hayden Planetarium, Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, Leisure Lanes, Robert Coles, third grade, Tom Jolls, Woodlawn, Woodlawn Intermediate, Woodlawn Primary

A Lament for All the Nobody’s Out There

By Chris Carosa on July 25, 2017

I showed up unannounced (and a day early) at Chris Collins’ office at 1117 Longworth. Actually, I was under the mistaken impression the “11” of “1117” represented the floor. There is no 11th floor in the Longworth building, which I discovered only after the elevator doors closed. Fortunately, a kind lady told me the first “1” represented the building and the second “1” represented the floor.

When I arrived at his office, Collins wasn’t there. He was on the House floor voting on, as near as I can tell from the daily record of July 18, 2017, a series of otherwise mundane amendments. Somebody probably thinks they are important. Maybe even Collins. I didn’t bother to ask. Ironically, I didn’t think it was any of my business.

I say it’s “ironic” because everything Congress does is, quite literally, “the people’s business.” It’s just that I’m so accustomed to thinking of myself as a nobody that Continue Reading “A Lament for All the Nobody’s Out There”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Boy Scout, Child IRA, Chris Collins, CNBC, Congress, Eagle Scout, Washington DC