Marty After Dark - Almost Live...From New York

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Thursday

Jun302011

June 30, 2011

I thought I’d write a short story about a friend of mine tonight. First a few photos on the walk home and then the story.

And here we go down 6th Avenue, the familiar walk home.

Holy shitballs...look at the address and then look at the image below! I think I've found the headquarters for Cardboard Box Man! Aaaaaah!

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Julie

Life is is a little kooky, you never know how someone you meet will impact your life. I have a friend named Julie and if the two of us never would have meant our lives would be so different today that it’s kind of weird for me to think about.

Back in the summer of 1992 I got a phone call from a woman who told me she had seen my magazine POP and wanted to know if I was looking for contributing writers. She told me her name was Julie and that she had just moved back to Peoria from California where she had lived for years. She had moved back due to some family issues and was looking for local writing gigs. She was pleasant on the phone and we had a nice conversation. During the course of the phone call we made a date to have lunch.

A few days later we were having lunch at a casual restaurant nearby my aparment complex. Julie’s a pretty, petite blonde, energetic, super smart and had a load of good article ideas for POP. I told her I’d love to have her contribute to the magazine. I then had to confess that I didn’t pay writers anything because I was losing money hand over fist on POP due to a severe lack of advertising. But I told her that there would be very little editing to her writing and no creative restraints as far as articles and ideas went. She agreed to write for free so I picked up the bill for lunch and a friendship had begun.

During the lunch I had asked Julie where else she was writing and she told me she had done a couple articles for the Pekin Daily Times. Pekin is a neighboring town to Peoria and they have their own daily paper. She told me the editors there knew who I was and liked my magazine. She said they were nice guys and I should meet them. I got their names from Julie and called and made an appointment to see Kevin Kaufman who was the managing editor.

Kevin was a lean guy who had a nice disposition. He took me to the editor-in-chief, Kent Davy and introduced me. We had a nice meeting and I started pitching them ideas and soon I was writing freelance articles for their newspaper. While I had been editing and publishing my own magazine for two years, I had never been published by anyone else and having articles in the Pekin Daily Times and getting paid for writing really increased my confidence about my writing skills and ability. I felt like I was really a professional writer.

One afternoon before going in to my night job I stopped by the Pekin Daily Times to turn in an article I had written. I also had some issues of POP hot off the presses and gave some to some of the people in the newsroom, including Kent. Kent was flipping through the issue and asked me the following life-changing question: “Have you ever sent one of these to Dick Stolley out in New York?”

I looked at him quizzically and said, “Who the fuck is Dick Stolley?”

“You want to come over here and sit down for a second?” He asked while pointing to a chair next to his desk.

I went over and sat down and looked at Kent. Kent has a shaggy moustache and kind of looks like the actor Bob Balaban. He had a half-cocked smile on his face and was shaking his head at me.

“You know if I had a dunce cap I’d make you wear it and sit in the corner for an hour, for asking, ‘Who’s Dick Stolley?’” He sarcastically told me.

I slumped in my chair and said, “Are you going to tell me who this Stolley guy is or do I have to stay after school and write 100 times, ‘I don’t know who Dick Stolley is.’”

“You do remember Life magazine, right?” Kent asked me.

“Yeah, I remember Life magazine, who doesn’t?” I shot back.

“Well, Dick Stolley was an editor for Life in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s,” Kent told me.

“Okay,” I fired back still puzzled as to why he would be interested in my magazine.

He continued to question me interrogation style. “And you’ve created POP magazine, which is kind of a local, wacky version of People magazine, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Uh, is there an end to this anywhere down the road?” I asked impatiently. “I gotta get to work, I certainly can’t pay rent with what you pay me.”

Then Kent dropped the bomb.

“Dick Stolley was born and raised in Pekin, Illinois,” Kent told me with a smile. “His first writing job was here at the Pekin Daily Times and he’s now the Editorial Director for all of Time, Inc. He’s one of the biggest and powerful media guys in New York City. I know if you sent him a package with some of your magazines and clippings from this newspaper he’d be impressed and interested. I can almost guarantee you’d hear from him.”

“Holy shitballs, I gotta send this guy a package,” I barked out.

Kent laughed and said, “Get out of here and let me know what happens.”

So I dutifully wrote a letter and sent Dick Stolley a package. A week later I get a letter from him saying he was impressed but was curious as to why I hadn’t been tarred and feathered and ridden out on a rail from Peoria for some of the stuff I had written in POP. It was a nice letter and I was thrilled. He said if I was ever in New York, he’d like to have lunch with me. I’ve written about this before, so to make a long story short, I flew out, had lunch with him and showed him more clippings. I told him I was losing money on my magazine and probably wouldn’t be able to publish another issue. I confessed to him that I was a little confused about what to do next. Then he asked me a magic question.

“Have you ever thought about moving out here to New York? This is the city for a guy like you,” Stolley asked while gears started turning in my gray matter.

I never had thought about moving to New York. I had loved New York since a kid and had visited the city about three times, but when you grow up in Peoria, moving to New York seems about as likely as building a rocketship and flying to Mars. But after I had heard that question I was obsessed about moving to New York.

Again, I’ve written about this before so I’ll explain what happened next in broad strokes. I found out I could cash in my pension plan from my night job and get a decent chunk of dough, I sold my car, my furniture, my TV, my stereo, my records, most of my clothes and put in notice at work. I flew to New York for a week and found a little apartment on the Upper West Side. I bought a one-way plane ticket and was all set to become a New Yorker. I was flying out on July 7th, 1993. I was 35-years-old and It was probably the most exciting time of my life.

At the beginning of July I had a going away party at my apartment. Most of the people who had worked on POP magazine with me for the last three years were there and a lot of my friends showed up. Julie was there and I noticed her talking for quite a while with my friend, Bob Gordon.

Most people know Bob by his nickname of “Boots,” but I call him “Homer.” It’s a long story, so don’t ask. I’ve known Homer since I was in high school. I was curious as to what Homer and Julie would be talking about because, while they’re both great people, they seemed like opposites to me. Homer is kind of a beer drinking, down to earth, sports kind of guy and Julie’s more of a pop arts and cultural person. After about ten beers I didn’t think much more about it. The party went on until the wee small hours of the morning and the memories of it are fuzzy at best.

The next day I was hungover and it felt like there was a hatchet in my head. I was picking up beer cans all over my soon to be vacant apartment. The phone rang and it was my friend Bob Gordon a.k.a. Homer.

We shot the shit for a few minutes and then he told me he thought Julie was real nice and wondered if I’d give him her phone number so he could ask her out.

“Jesus Christ, she’s a good friend of mine, do you think I want her going out with an animal like you?” I jokingly asked him.

“Fuck you asshole, just give me the number. You’re moving to New York, you’ll probably be dead in a week, so what do you care?” He joked back.

I told him I felt weird just giving him the number, I told him I’d call Julie and see if it was okay. I think Homer called me a pussy and I told him I’d call him back.

So I called Julie and it kind of took her by surprise. She said she wasn’t sure because she didn’t really know him. I vouched for Homer and told Julie I’ve been friends with him since I was a kid and the worst thing I ever saw him do was throw a pickle halfway across McDonalds and have it land smack-dab in the middle of some asshole’s forehead and stick there. And yes, that asshole was me! So she agreed, I called Homer and gave him the number and then continued cleaning while nursing my hangover.

A week later I was on a plane bound for New York City, my new home.

About a year later, Homer and Julie got married. They’ve got three kids now.

I always wonder what our lives would be like if we never met each other. It kind of scares the shit out of me. One thing is for sure, I probably never would’ve moved to New York, so this blog never would’ve happened and most of us never would’ve known each other. Pretty fucking weird when you think about it.

Further reading: Free Dictionary, Amazon, IMDb and Smoking Hot Waitress.

You also might like: Mony Mony, Sugar Sugar and Jimmy Jimmy.