South Beach – Miami – Ocean Drive

My birth-mother Harriet “Tish” Smith is dead. She died on March 1st, 2020, at Aventura Hospital & Medical Center, and much like in her life, she was alone, unhappy and afraid. It was terribly sad, yet completely predictable. For whatever reason, she abandoned just about everyone who ever loved her. A member of the Silent Generation, she lived through World War II against Nazi Germany and witnessed the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

MOM – Age 29 – 1970

Baby RJ 1966

I, however, am a product of Generation X. Born just after Christmas 1965 in the small village of Ossining, New York, I grew up in the 1970s, when black was black and white was white. It was a good time to be a kid, but I don’t remember much of the first four years. Does anybody? Virtually ALL my remembrances begin around the age of five. I do recall, however, that almost every year, mother moved us to a different run-down one-bedroom apartment because she wanted to get away from the men in her life.’

A lonely place, Ossining had one stoplight and three-stop signs. Suburban life in America back then resembled the fictitious town of Mayberry depicted in the then-popular television show, Andy Griffin Show. Our village even had our own oddball police officer like Barney Fife, played by the great comedian and actor, Don Knotts. Mister Rogers was another hot kid show, but there were only three television channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC plus Color Television was a new technology. Everyone seemed friendlier in the ’70s, and neighbors were more connected. In fact, I’d propose when peering through the foggy lens of history, one could argue American life was better than when compared to current times. Neighbors interacted and organized neighborhood parties, barbeques and sometimes even summered together. Here is my hometown in Florida,  only two neighbors are friendly. The remainder are either extremely standoffish or dismissive.

Andy Griffin Show

View from Hill

One of my fondest reveries from my boyhood with mom was that of Ossining Police Officer Mikey Flynn whom she dated for about a year. I’d hang out with him at the Police Station, and was even allowed to ride in his patrol car. That was an experience that would stay with me throughout my life. I thought cops were the coolest guys I’d ever met. Once, my friends and I actually saw a burglary in progress and ran to the station to tell them. After apprehending the suspect, the chief gave us tin police badges. I wish I had a picture of that. Ossining was and remains a prison town where almost everyone worked inside the infamous Sing-Sing state penitentiary. America’s first serial killer, Albert Fish, was executed here in January 1936 and even the Son of Sam walked the maximum-security yard protected by gun towers and thirty-foot brick walls. 

The place is legendary. Of course, to us kids, it was a place of horror we thankfully only glimpsed from a hill overlooking the exercise yard. Down below, we’d watch enormous men working out with weights, running the perimeter and playing football or baseball depending on the season. There was even an old black man who’d glance up at the hill and wave to us. We always wondered, what was an old guy like that doing in prison? He had to be in his seventies.

Age 3 – 1968, Me and Rusty

Age 4 – 1969

In my writings, I often use the phrase Dead End Friends. It is an important term from my childhood, describing blood brothers – when two best friends decided they were more like real brothers they’d slice open their palms and grip hands allowing the blood to mingle. Nowadays such an act would be akin to suicide with all the deadly diseases our society faces. It was a happy time in my young life. Children of my generation actually had to go outside to play with friends. We had to use our imaginations, muscles and brains. I remember playing long ago forgotten games with my buddies. Stickball, Hide and Seek, Marbles and  Tag were the big ones. Girls played Kick the Can, Hop Scotch, Red Rover, and Mother, May I? We rode bicycles, went spent a lot of time Tree Climbing, and mastering Jump Rope. They were our ONLY means of entertainment. It kept us in shape and helped develop a musculature. Childhood Obesity was practically non-existent despite the fact we consumed mountains of sugar and fatty foods just like modern kids. The difference is social interactions now comes by way of virtual STATUS updates, a Tweet, Instagram, Google, Facebook or YouTube posts. We didn’t have the Internet, Computers, Cellphones, Xbox or Playstation. They were not invented yet In fact, the technologies of today were nothing more than Science Fiction stories considered laughable fantasies. When seeing such future tech in sci-fi magazines, one automatically defaulted to thoughts of comic books, aliens, bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster.  It’s simply amazing what we’ve accomplished since 1950. Think about that. American life was a splinter of what it is now. There wasn’t much to do so we’d hang out at Roller Rinks, Drive-in Theaters, and I even joined the Young Marines. It was a wholesome life full of wonder and excitement.  

Summer Camp

Age 5, 1970

One of the highlights of my boyhood was summer camp that mom sent me off to every year. I excelled at baseball and played a lot as a kid. Modern kids no longer attend summer camp in the numbers they once did and certainly don’t engage now as we did at the same age. Around the age of 6, I began paying attention to music. The first song I remember hearing was Bennie and the Jets by Sir. Elton John while seated in a  beauty salon waiting for mom to get her hair teased out (a weekly event). The song erupting from an old wooden terrestrial radio introducing me to who’d become one of my favorite singers. This was way back when Elton dressed up in outrageous outfits.

I’d come to love music, especially during the holidays when they’d play Christmas music. My half-siblings, Larry and Laura would always visit on Christmas. Unknown to me at the time, mom had abandoned them a few years previously. Luckily, they went to live with their dad who took ’em’ in, raised ’em, loved them and provided a safe and comfortable life.

Raised normally, my siblings had a sheltered existence and enjoyed a typical American childhood. Both excelled at school and eventually went on to college before raising their own beautiful families. To this very day, I am proud to call them family. This is especially true for my amazing brother Larry who managed to sectionalize the abhorrent pain and lonely anguish of his birth mother leaving him.

In fall, 1973, shit started hitting the fan. Mother had sent me off with one of her male friends to stay at a cabin in the Bear Mountains while she vacationed in Florida with her Beau de Jour. For weeks, this guy named Robert molested me every day before returning me home. Somehow, like many abused kids, I knew something wasn’t right about it so I told mother what had happened. Shockingly, she laughed and didn’t believe me. That took something away from our otherwise close relationship. In retrospect, I suppose I lost trust for her. Yet the worst was still to come.

Age 7, 1972 – First Communion

Age 8 – December 1973

Hell on Earth began for me in the dead of winter on Christmas Eve, 1973. Then boyfriend Freddie, a sewer plant manager, had moved in months prior and on this night again returned from work and began beating mom. Running from his grasp, she grabbed a carving knife and plunged it into his chest. Staring in shock at his gushing blood from the corner of the room, I began to weep and mom rapidly approached, gathered me into her arms and hurried from the apartment and into the passenger seat of her Camaro with just the clothes on my back.

We must have driven for hours, my mom behind the steering wheel and chain-smoking one Salem after another. Sometime later, I noticed she had driven into New York City. I had a sick feeling in my gut and stared at her as tears trailed down her cheeks. Pulling to the curb, she pointed to a bodega, handed me a bunch of cash and told me to run inside and grab her a few packs of cigarettes (nobody cared if kids bought smokes back then). I didn’t think anything of it, as I had done this a hundred times previously without consequence. Surprisingly, though, this time … as soon as my feet hit the sidewalk, the car pulled away from the curb and she abandoned me right there on the corner. I was confused, frightened and didn’t know what was happening. Dashing into the street, I chased the disappearing taillights to no avail. However, by the time I realized what had happened, she was long gone! That night, I felt like I died inside and was almost run over by a box truck. But, from out of nowhere, a teenaged Puerto Rican boy pushed me to safety.

There I slouched, crying on the corner of 42nd Street & 8th Avenue smack in the center of the then derelict,  Times Square.  Rain was tumbling from dark ominous clouds and large drops pounded the pavement. Somewhere in the distance sirens shrieked, horns blared and Hookers were working their trade beside what I now know were Pimps. One of the girls was screaming at a Trick horrified behind the wheel of an old run-down car.

Times Square 1974

Pimp with Hookers 1974

This was a scandalous place in the 1970s. Hookers, Drug Dealers, the Homeless and Crime ruled The Square. It was nothing like the Disneyesque of Times Square of current times. Back then, it was a dangerous place for adults, let alone a seventy-pound eight-year-old white boy with big blue eyes and fair skin.

As I have written extensively in The Santa Claus Killer, and my emotionally charged True Crime Novel, Destiny, the Puerto Rican kid became known to me as Marco, one of the dozens of discarded kids living in abandoned apartment buildings in the slums of Washington Heights. They scrounged for food in restaurant garbage cans and sometimes restaurant managers would give us their unsold food when closing at the end of their day. This was the beginning of a five-year ordeal where I’d grow into my teens as a street-savvy kid. It changed me, just as it does for every abandoned child. I became a shadow of the boy I once was and for whatever reason no longer had my mom to comfort me when scared. I was literally all alone.

I suppose, like any kid, I was attached at the hip with my mother. Not having her as I grew up was a gut-wrenching experience. I became insecure and emotionally detached. Sometimes I’d be forced to fight and learned boys were more likely to turn their feelings inward. Showing fear or weakness was like offering red meat to a lion. It is now known that physically, mentally and sexually abused kids are more likely to become little hoodlums. Studies have even found that abject poverty also leads to aggressive behavior. At the time, all I knew was that I had to survive at any cost and I became someone I didn’t recognize.

After five long years growing up on the streets of manhatan, at the age of thirteen, I was plucked from Times Square by police and eventually evaluated by New York City Department of Children and Families. Placing me at The McQuade Foundation for Boys in the town of  New Windsor, I finally felt normal again, made lots of new friends, went to school and began to trust all over again. But just three years later, for whatever reasomn, Mom demand she get me back. Within two weeks, I was escorted aboard a Pan Am Jetliner and flown to Miami International Airport. I hadn’t seen mom in eight years.

1980 – The McQuade Foundation

1973 McQuade, my Friends

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I had done well in school and recently signed up to enter the United States after I received my high school diploma six-months later. Thinking back to yesteryear, I now realize how much I wanted to become a soldier. Missing that opportunity is one of my biggest regrets… a sore memory that often bothers me time and again. But, it wasnt my fault and I have to remember that.

Walking off that airplane in Miami I didn’t know what to expect. One step led to the next and when exiting the jetway I immediately recognized my mother. Emotionally overwhelmed, I practically collapsed into her arms. This was the moment I had dreamt about for years! To say my emotions were a mess would be an understatement. She still maintained her good looks, even then at the age of forty.

“How’ve ya been?” she asked, her arm loosely slung around my shoulders.

It was almost like the last eight years didn’t happen and I had merely returned from a Twilight Zone field trip. Strange is a lacksadaisical word to describe the entirety of that experience. My emotions were pulling me in two separate directions. The next day, she registered me at North Miami Senior High School, where I entered the 12th grade and settled in for what was expected to be a fabulous reunification with mom.

1981 – My High School

Meeting cool teens my age, the ensuing months were wonderful. I had a tightknit group of friends and a sexy girlfriend by the name of Kristen. Excelling at sports, I’d make the baseball tryouts and would practice as a right fielder. Life was good until one day, the other foot dropped. When returning home after school I discovered all my clothes and property had been thrown off a second-story walkway onto the sidewalk below.

What the hell? I thought. I don’t get it! 

Running upstairs, I discovered the deadbolt key mother had given me no longer fit the lock. Banging on the door and window, I was sure this was some kind of sick joke or mistake. Yet, the years had taught me much and educated me on the worst of humanity. Thus, it didn’t take long to figure out the situation. Mother had abandoned me again! Yet, the question was, why? I had been doing everything right, we got along great, and I didn’t push her on explaining why she’d abandoned me all those years previously. Despite what I’d been through, I was a well-mannered teenager, was very attractive and a straight-A-student. Thinking I had a bright future ahead of me in sunny South Florida.

But, the hell of my youth would multiple infinitely here in the Sunshine State.

Aventura, Miami 2010

The Santa Claus Killer pre-launch

So, on February 28th, 2020, when I got a phone call from my brother in Utah, I wasn’t expecting him to ask me to handle an emerging issue with my eldery mother I hadnt seen in years. Apparently, she had Stage 4 Lung Cancer and had just received a second dose of chemotherapy. I knew nothing about it, we were estranged despite my continued attempts in 2010-to-2014 to reconnect and get to know her.

So, there I was, four-hundred miles from Miami and Larry wanted find out about the situation. He gave me mom’s neighbor’s phone number and I promised I’d call. Apparently, Tish had been found two days in a row on the floor. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, and had a 103-degree temperature.

So, I did what any good son might and called North Miami Fire Rescue from West-Central Florida where I now live.

Christmas 2012

Relating to Larry what I’d been told and the actions I took, he asked me to drive down to Miami and “see what’s up?” I never in a million years ever believed I’d be the sibling who’d get in a car, rush 400 miles to a hospital I knew nothing about and hold my birth-mother’s hand as she lay in Aventura Hospital and Medical Center.

That night, the doctor told me she was dying and that I should contact the rest of our family. Although my brother cared, that was the extent of anyone who gave a shit. It made me sad, but sometimes we make our own bed.

The first night I saw her, something happened in me. Deep down where the past nags in the gut, all the anger, disappointment, frustration and hatred I had for her, the person responsible for Hell on Earth for that young boy who grew up an orphan. It just evaporated, like everything I went through ended on her death bed. A sense of relief came over me.

February 28, 2020

March 1st, 2020

One of the last things she mumbled to me was: “my kids aren’t here but I guess after what I did to them they wouldn’t be.”  That was the closest thing to “I’m sorry” she would allow herself.  And, I accepted that. The bottom line for me was that I got to say goodbye, called a priest and watched as he gave mom last rights.

That night, I whispered in her ear that I forgave and assured her I’d be alright.  At 7:3o a.m. on March 1st, 2020, she slipped away to the darkness which awiats us all.

It took a long time for me to realize, but sometimes in our lives, we allow things to follow us around like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Pain, regret, and difficult memories are hard to resolve. Yet in the end, I discovered that those we think we despise the most seem to be pretty easy to forgive. I was blessed to have closure.

UPDATED: 17 March 2020