MY BEAUTIFUL FRIEND, A TRUE INSPIRATION

I was writing a novel about a mysterious old lady who lives in a skylight room, and I had a good morning pattern going: Walk the dog, come home, hit the keys. Lots of people walk their dogs in this British suburb called Hampton, and if you stick to a routine, you’re going to cross leashes with the same people.

The person I fell into stride with nearly every morning was a remarkable woman named Clare Owen, a widow in her eighties living happily with her two dogs.

She had the brightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t surprised to learn she’d been an actress most of her life, movies as well as theater, and I wondered when she’d retired.

The answer was, never. She was still working, auditioning on Zoom. This, at the height of the pandemic!

“I have a part in a rap video,” she told me matter-of-factly one morning.

I was stunned. “A rap video?”

“Oh, I’m not actually rapping. I’m sitting on a bench with two other ladies, eating ice cream. My daughter was quite upset at me for being out and about, and I said, ‘I’m not going to just sit around the bloody house!’ “

Well, that was Clare, telling it like it was as she maintained a brisk walking pace through sunshine and rain, getting those dogs the exercise they needed, and (inadvertently) giving me some inspiration I needed.

“Clare,” I said one morning, “I’m writing this book about a lady in Greenwich Village who’s lived in a skylight room for seventy years. She reminds me of you, and I wondered if you’d let me call her Clare Owen.”

She laughed out loud. “By all means, go right ahead!”

And so from that morning on, the hero of my book had a name. I heard Clare’s voice as I typed. I never wrote anything Clare actually said, but the spirit of my character was hers. Feisty, independent, and funny.

When my final draft was ready I printed it out and delivered it to Clare’s house. I was nervous. My fictional Clare lives a wild young life in Greenwich Village, which ends up costing her big-time. Would the real Clare like the story? Would I still have permission to use her name? I’d find out in an email, the very next day.

“Finished it this morning,” Clare wrote. “Could not stop reading it except when I had to go to sleep. I loved it. You are more than welcome to use my name.”

What a relief! So I went ahead and published “The Skylight Room,“ dedicating it in part to “the real Clare Owen.” She got a kick out of that.

After that, I saw less of Clare. I knew she had health issues, and one day in October I dropped by her house to find one of her sons standing outside, looking grim. Clare was inside, on palliative care. She’d been in the hospital and wanted to come home. She died a few days later, just weeks past her 85th birthday.

I’m glad she liked my book. I’m glad she gave me permission to use her name. And I’m glad about one more thing - a story I later heard about Clare’s ride home from the hospital.

Seems the big yellow ambulance was rumbling along when Clare suddenly spoke up.

“There’s a Costa coffee up ahead,” she said to the paramedics. “Let’s stop and have a cup.”

And so they did, these medical professionals who probably still can’t believe that a woman in Clare's condition would want to stop for coffee.

But I wasn’t surprised. The real Clare Owen lived a life that was good to the last drop. My Clare Owen would have done the same thing.

Link to The Skylight Room:

https://www.amazon.com/SKYLIGHT-ROOM-Charlie-Carillo-ebook/dp/B09836B84N

GOODBYE, PETE HAMILL

My mother introduced me to Pete Hamill. It happened on a summer day when I was sixteen years old, and she came to me with tears in her eyes, clutching her latest edition of the Reader’s Digest.

“You have to read this story, Charles,” she said.

It was called “Going Home,” and it was about an ex-con named Vingo who’d just been released from prison and was taking a long bus ride home to Florida. Would his wife take him back? He’d written and told her to put a yellow handkerchief on a big oak tree near the bus stop if she wanted him. If he didn’t see a handkerchief, he’d stay on the bus and keep going.

By the time the bus is approaching his stop, everyone aboard knows what’s happening. Suddenly the tree comes into view, and the passengers go crazy. Quote: “It was covered with yellow handkerchiefs, twenty of them, thirty of them, maybe hundreds…the old con rose from his seat, holding himself tightly, and made his way to the front of the bus to go home.”

So now my mother and I were both crying, and that’s when I noticed the byline on the story: Pete Hamill.

How did he do it? His story was emotional without being sentimental, touching without being touchy-feely. That’s a wire-walk not many writers can manage.

And to my delight, Pete had a newspaper column that ran a couple of times a week! His stories just kept coming!

Now we flash-forward to the early 90s. I’m a reporter at the New York Post, and Pete has re-joined the newspaper where he started. The first time I see him in the old South Street newsroom, it’s almost too perfect: Brooklyn’s favorite son is walking past the big windows facing the Brooklyn Bridge, a replica Brooklyn Dodgers cap on his head, a huge smile on his face.

I introduce myself and tell him how much the “Going Home” column meant to me, though I’m not crazy about the song it inspired. He chuckles.

“Heard the story in a bar,” he says. “Took out my notebook and wrote it all down.”

So it’s true, I said to myself. Columnists get their ideas in bars!

Well, not always. Pete quit drinking on New Year’s Eve, 1972, and his work got even better.

It was a joy having him as a colleague, and for a while we were fellow columnists. One day our columns appeared on opposite pages. The thrill of it, our faces peering out from those two pages! I felt like I was playing in the outfield next to Willie Mays!

Speaking of baseball, I figure I batted around .333 as a columnist - one out of three was good. No wonder I didn’t last. You hit .333 in baseball, you’re in the Hall of Fame, but to stick around as a columnist you’d better bat .900, as Pete did, as Jimmy Breslin did. 

Pete once wrote me a note, telling me how much he liked one of my stories. A fan letter from Pete Hamill! Another time, he sent me a note when I’d written something slick and smart-ass. "Protect your talent, amigo," he warned me, and he was right.

That’s what set Pete apart. He cared about the rest of us. He was a star who didn’t behave like one. The words were all that mattered.

And now that Pete is gone, I’m suspending my longtime agnosticism for a little while. Thinking of him taking that last ride we all must take, imagining him wondering what’s ahead, and then seeing it. A big oak tree, maybe, covered with yellow handkerchiefs. Twenty of them, thirty of them, maybe hundreds.

www.carilloauthor.com

SEEING THE BIG PICTURE

I was never going to write this story. Over the years I’ve told it to some friends, and always in a low voice, not sure about how they’d react.

But now I’m in lockdown in London over this coronavirus crisis, and suddenly this story is knocking on the door of my mental attic, begging to be released.

It happened almost nineteen years ago, soon after the 9/11 attacks. I was living in Greenwich Village and for days on end I kept the windows of my apartment shut to repel a horrible burning smell from the wreckage of the twin towers, just a mile or so downtown.

It seemed like that fire would burn forever.

Like everybody else in New York City, I was stunned. How could this happen here? What’s next?

Well, “next” was a notification from Time Warner Cable, about two weeks after the attack. My cable had gone out a few days before 9/11, and I’d called for a repairman, but that was before the world turned upside-down. Of course all repairs had been delayed when the crisis hit, but now at last a cable guy was on his way to my house.

He was young, smart and energetic. Think Chris Rock with a toolbox, and that’s who showed up to fix my cable.

He knelt in front of the TV to fiddle around with my cable box, then took a long breath before turning to face me.

“Now, I’ve got to tell you something terrible,” he said, quite dramatically.

And I thought: I’m about to be hit with a whopper of a repair bill, but so what? I don’t care what it costs. Three thousand people just lost their lives down the street! That’s all that counts! This problem is nothing, no matter what it is!

“Okay,” I said, “what’s the terrible thing?”

He looked left and right, the way someone does when they’re about to tell an off-color joke. “With those towers gone,” he said, “you’re gonna get the best picture you ever seen.”

Before I could respond he turned the TV on. Damn if it wasn’t the cleanest, sharpest picture I’d ever seen.

“See that?” the repairman said. “Those towers been hoggin’ the signals for thirty years!”

What could I say, what could I do? I just stood there, holding my breath.

Then I laughed.

Not because I thought it was funny. Jesus, nothing was funny in those days after 9/11. I guess I was reacting to the insanity of the way the world works, and doesn’t work, but keeps on going, no matter what. Just like it’ll keep on going this time, no matter how this coronavirus crisis plays out.

Guess you could say the little picture on my TV screen showed me the big picture overall.

By the way, there was no charge for the TV repair. I tipped the cable guy five bucks. Wish I’d made it ten.

www.carilloauthor.com

ON A WING AND A PRAYER

It might seem like a strange time to be telling a story like this, but stay with me.

It’s about a toucan that was kidnapped (bird-napped?) a long time ago, when I looked like that face on my press card.

I was a reporter for the New York Post, and this baby was all mine. I had a pretty good touch when it came to animal stories, which are vital to any decent tabloid, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Anyway, I interviewed the toucan’s owner, who was offering a reward for information leading to the return of his beloved bird.

I wrote up a real tear-jerker, and the day the story ran, my phone rang.

‘I know where the bird is,” the caller said. I could hear traffic noise in the background. He was on a pay phone, and somehow that made him sound legitimate. He gave me an address in a rough Brooklyn neighborhood, which I passed on to the bird’s owner.

And just like that the toucan story made a hairpin turn into an episode of Law and Order, as a photographer and I rode out to the address that night with the bird’s owner and two cops!

We climbed the creaky tenement stairs - the cops first, followed by the rest of us. When we got to the apartment door, the cops drew their guns. Then they knocked.

And suddenly it hit me: This could go very, very wrong. My God, I could get killed in a hail of bullets, covering a missing bird story! What a way to go!

But before I could dwell on it the thief opened the door and was quickly handcuffed, as the photographer took pictures and the toucan’s owner let out a cry of joy at the sight of his bird, safe in a cage on the kitchen table.

I was giddy on the way back to the newsroom to write it up. What a night! What thrills, for a kid like me! Hell, I was indestructible! Nothing bad could happen to me, and this proved it!

Well, I’m not a kid anymore. I’m far from indestructible, and here’s the thing that gets me:

That once-dangerous Brooklyn neighborhood where the toucan was taken is now almost as safe as a petting zoo, in terms of crime.

But there and everywhere else in the world, you actually have to wonder if it’s safe to go outside and breathe within six feet of another human being. Bullets you can’t even see.

Tough to find anything to laugh about these days, so here’s hoping the headline on my follow-up story about the bird who was stolen and then rescued all those years ago gives you a chuckle:

TOUCAN PLAY AT THIS GAME!

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YOU KNOW ME, AL

This happened in the early 80s, when the United States government had issued some kind of form that was supposed to be easy to understand - except that the general public was baffled by it.

New York Post City Editor Al Ellenberg told me to write a story about it - but first, he wanted to see the form for himself.

“Give me that thing everybody’s complaining about,” he growled, an unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips. At this time Al was crowding fifty, and living a somewhat complicated life, which is to say he’d show up at work each day with a suitcase.

“Okay,” he said, taking pen in hand. “Let’s see - name, Albert Ellenberg. Address…”

He stopped writing, tossed the form aside. “They’re right! I’m stumped!”

And the rewrite bank exploded in laughter, as we so often did with Al at the helm.

I always considered Al a triple threat, because he was a Jewish man who looked Italian and could drink like an Irishman.

If that last sentence offends you, well, too bad. As I said up top, this was the eighties, long before the Politically Correct Police stormed the castle.

And Al, who has died at age 84, would not have been offended by that description. Hell, he used to call me “Goombah,” and I loved it.

He was brilliant, he was funny, and my God, what an editor. He had a way of making you solve a problem by yourself, and once you did that, you could do it for the rest of your career.

“You’re a good teacher,” I once told him. He laughed off the compliment, but he knew I was right.

One night after work we were unwinding at the Lion’s Head when Al turned to me and asked, “Do you understand what your job is?”

I thought I knew. “To report the news in a fair and balanced - “

“No, no.”

“Uh. To keep the public informed - “

“No, no.”

I tried to define my job a few more times, to no avail. “I give up, Al,” I said. “What is it?”

He smiled. “Your job,” he said, “is to make me happy.”

So simple, and yet so complicated.

Right around this time Al decided to run the New York City Marathon. He went for a check-up, and when the doctor took his blood pressure he gave it to Al straight:

“You run, you die.”

Which did not deter Al.

“I left his office, went to a deli and had a big corned beef sandwich,” Al told me. “Washed it down with a beer and finished it off with a cigarette.”

P.S. He entered and completed the marathon. And I’m betting he outlived that doctor.

The last time I saw Al Ellenberg was in the produce section of Gristede’s at Sheridan Square. We both lived downtown, but you know how it goes in New York - you can see your neighbor three days in a row, and then not for another twenty years.

His hair and eyebrows had gone gray, but there was no mistaking the twinkle in his eye. I was so stunned by the sight of him that all I could do was gawk.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said with a smile. “How you doin’, Goombah?”

www.carilloauthor.com

TALL BUILDINGS, WALTER CRONKITE AND THE LAST LAUGH

One look at this breath-taking photograph by Dennis O’Brien and I’m a kid again, just out of college, dreaming of working in a dazzling Manhattan high-rise like the ones you see here.

It’s a stupid dream, but there it is - I want to be twenty stories up in a cool building with great views to inspire my work. That’s how it goes in the movies, right?

As a typical English major, I have no idea of what kind of work I can get, but at least I know what kind of office I’d like.

Well, dreams take detours. A friend gets me an interview at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street - not a high-rise, by any means - and there I am, in the personnel office, answering questions I can no longer remember.

But I must have said something right, because from there I’m sent for a physical exam, which consists of a doctor listening to my heart for ten seconds and asking me to extend my bare arms.

What the hell? I do as I’m told, and then the doctor turns my hands palms-up to examine my forearms.

And it hits me: He’s looking for track marks. This is the Seventies, and a lot of people are on the spike, and the last thing they want on the payroll is a junkie.

I pass the physical, and the job is mine - security guard! Hardly a dream career, but I’m assured that after six months I’ll be eligible for other jobs in the company.

Take it, they say. This is an exciting place! Television! News programs, soap operas…It’s all so exciting, and you’ll be in on the ground floor!

Whenever someone’s about to pay you poorly, they talk about excitement instead of money.

But they’re not kidding about that ground floor business. That’s where I’m stationed - in the lobby, wearing a jacket and tie, checking the I.D. cards of everybody coming into the building.

Except for Walter Cronkite, the silver-haired anchorman of the Evening News. The most trusted man in America doesn’t have to show his I.D.

He is royalty.

He’s been everywhere, done everything. There’s a glow around him, like a halo, and when he leaves for the night we have to to follow him outside to take down the license plate of the car he gets into, in case he gets kidnapped. No joke! He is the company’s franchise!

One day he walks in carrying his tennis gear, having just come off the court.

“How’d you do, Mr. Cronkite?” he is asked.

He smiles. “Split sets!” he says, in a voice as deep and resonant as I imagine God the Father’s would be.

It’s an honor to keep Walter Cronkite safe but otherwise it’s dull work, watching other people come and go while I sit there. After three months I just can’t take it anymore, and I quit. The personnel director can’t believe it.

“Why are you leaving?” she asks.

“Thing is,” I say, “I keep having nightmares about Mr. Cronkite getting kidnapped on my shift.”

She doesn’t think it’s funny, but she wishes me well, and that’s that. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but damn it, it’s going to be exciting! I’m young, I’m single, and there’s a great big world out there to conquer! Walter Cronkite did it, and so can I!

And some day, by God, I’ll work in a high-rise!

Thirty years go by.

In that time I’ve been a day laborer, a house painter, a New York Post reporter, a novelist, a screenwriter and finally a TV producer with Inside Edition. I’ve still never worked in a high-rise but I’ve had all the excitement I can stand, and one day there’s a big announcement at work:

We’re moving to a new office! Bigger spaces, better equipment!

And when we get there I fall down laughing, because our new work space is in a building like the ones in Dennis O’Brien’s photograph. My dream to work in a high-rise has finally come true, long after it’s stopped being my dream.

But that’s not all I’m laughing about. Our new office building is on West 57th Street, and its long shadow falls across the lobby where I once sat, checking I.D. cards and making sure Walter Cronkite didn’t get kidnapped.

I’ve conquered the world, all right. First job to last job, separated by nothing but a two-way street and a Greek with a doughnut cart.

Somewhere, I suspect Walter Cronkite is laughing, too. A deep, resonant laugh.

www.carilloauthor.com

IT WAS A GOOD FRIDAY, ALL RIGHT

It’s Friday night, and the Italian boy has invited the Irish girl he’s been dating to dinner at his parents’ house. This is a big deal. He’s serious about this girl, and he’s serious about his mother’s cooking, too.

“You’re going to love whatever she makes,” he promises.

He’s right about that. The girl has had clam chowder before, but never like this. Wow! Her boyfriend wasn’t kidding. His mother sure can cook.

“This is so delicious!” the girl says. “What’s that wonderful flavor?”

The mother smiles, decides to let the girl in on her secret. “That’s the bacon,” she says with a wink. “Gives it a nice taste.”

The girl turns pale and drops her spoon. She turns to the boy.

“Take me to church,” she says. “I have to see a priest.”

She isn’t kidding. As she pulls on her coat she explains to the boy’s parents and his four siblings that she’s a Catholic, and the nuns say it’s a sin to eat meat on Friday, and she’s got to get that sin off her immortal soul immediately.

“We’re Catholics too,” the mother says with a shrug, but by then her son and the girl are gone, out into the cold Brooklyn night in search of a priest.

The boy can’t believe this is happening, but he goes along with it. What else can he do? He keeps up with the girl on the way to the local church, which he attends casually, usually after somebody dies.

And that’s what the girl fears - if she’s struck dead before she confesses her sin, she’ll go straight to hell. The boy tries to calm her down.

“You didn’t eat the bacon on purpose,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, quickening her stride.

He wonders what’s going on back at the house. His father will be stunned, his siblings will be having a chuckle over it and oh, boy, he knows exactly what his mother is thinking: That girlfriend of yours left half her clam chowder. What a waste! THAT’S a sin!

And here’s what the boy is thinking: right or wrong, this is one passionate girl!

They reach the church. The girl pounds on the side door, where the clergymen live. Minutes pass before the door opens and a white-haired priest, obviously roused from his sleep, regards them with a suspicious eye.

“What is it?” he asks.

The girl tells the priest what has happened, and asks that her sin be forgiven. He’s wide-eyed with disbelief, assures her she has not sinned, but hey, if it makes you feel better, young lady, you are forgiven, and here’s a blessing.

He makes the sign of the cross, turns and shuts the door. The girl sighs with relief. The boy takes her hand.

“So,” he says, “let’s go back for dessert.”.

Okay, I’m no mystery writer. Obviously these are my parents, Cissy and Tony, back in their courting days. This is one of my favorite family stories, for a couple of reasons:

One, my father respected my mother’s adherence to that old No-Meat-On-Friday rule, even though he didn’t buy it.

And two, my mother didn’t force her personal beliefs on my father or any of the other bacon-eaters at that long-ago dinner table in Brooklyn.

They both still laugh about that crazy night. My parents don’t always believe in the same things, but they believe in each other, as they have since the day they got married - January 30th, 1954. Sixty-six years ago today.

Happy anniversary, kids. Mom says she’s taking Dad to lunch to celebrate. Wherever they go, I’m hoping there’s clam chowder on the menu.

www.carilloauthor.com

IT'S THE MOST WONDERFUL CRIME OF THE YEAR

I’d see it every morning during the Christmas season on my walk to work, a life-sized Nativity scene outside a church on the edge of Little Italy. Problem was, baby Jesus kept disappearing from the manger.

This was back in the ‘80s, a bad time for street crime in New York. Funny thing was that nobody ever swiped the rest of the statues - Mary, Joseph or the three wise men (in that neighborhood, three wise guys would have been more like it.)

But Jesus always vanished before his actual birthday.

Who was stealing him? What price could a plaster statue of the infant Jesus get on the black market?

Or was it just neighborhood rascals, having a little fun?

Year after year, it kept happening. What could be done?

Well, somebody figured that powerful spotlights would thwart the thieves. Up went the lights, worthy of a Hollywood premiere. It worked for a night or two, but one morning close to Christmas I saw a grim-faced priest standing at the edge of the scene, shaking his head at the empty patch of straw in the manger.

The problem was that the figures were out in the open, unlike the Christmas scene outside another church I passed each day on Bleecker Street.

That one had their Nativity figures inside a big wooden box, open in front and protected by a layer of chicken wire. It made them look like illegal aliens in a holding pen, awaiting asylum.

No, there had to be a better way for the Little Italy Nativity…and one magical holiday season, it happened. Morning after morning on my way to work, baby Jesus remained intact. Ditto on the walk home.

I had no work on Christmas day, but I had to stop by the church that morning to see if he was still there. I worked my way through the crowd for the ten o’clock mass, and there Jesus lay, safe in the manger!

It was a miracle!

But wait - what was that metal knob protruding from his navel? I got closer for a better look and saw that it was the top of a long bolt, which went through the statue’s belly and out his back. It was screwed into a fitting buried in the cement floor beneath the manger. You’d have needed a crowbar to get him out, maybe even a backhoe.

So I guess it wasn’t a miracle. Then again, maybe it was, because if ever there was a miraculous solution to a tricky problem, this was it.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

www.carilloauthor.com

A GUY NAMED BILL, AND THE CHRISTMAS GIFT OF A LIFETIME

The smiling young man pictured here always believed he had the stuff to make it to the top, and this is his day to prove it - he’s been invited to a tryout with the West Brom soccer club. The big time.

As he walks out for the scrimmage young Frank O’Mahony can barely believe his eyes, or his feet, which have never stood on a field this beautiful. The grass is so green it seems to glow, and there’s not a bare patch in sight.

The game starts - Brits call it football, not soccer - and it’s as if the splendid conditions actually elevate his game. Frank is outrunning the defenders, controlling the ball as if it’s on a string, passing well and faking out his opponents.

He’s elated as the first half ends, knowing he has to be making an impression on the coaches. This is it! All that practice, all those push-ups, all those games he’s played on shabby fields with bad lighting…at last, it’s about to pay off. By halftime Frank really believes his dream is going to come true.

Or is it?

He takes the field for the second half, and can’t believe his eyes. He’s standing in the shadow of the guy who’ll be defending him, a veteran West Brom star named Bill. He’s big, he’s broad, he’s fast, and worst of all for Frank, he likes to knock guys around, at a time before fouls were called on the rough stuff.

To top it off, Bill is fully rested, having sat out the first half. Frank, bruised and aching from his all-out play, feels his shoulders sag as he watches Bill shaking his arms and jogging in place, like a boxer eager for the bell.

Oh no, Frank thinks. I’m a dead man!

It’s as if Bill can read his mind. With just moments before the start of play, a smiling Bill puts a friendly grip on Frank’s elbow.

“Don’t worry,” he whispers. “I’ve been watching you. You’re gonna make it. Go ahead and play your game. I’ll hit you a few times to make it look good, but play your game.”

Play your game. Three of the most beautiful words in the English language, right up there with I love you.

Bill is good to his word. He knocks Frank down a few times, but gives him enough light and space to showcase his gifts. The final whistle blows to end the game, and as an exhausted Frank walks off the field, the head coach puts an arm across his shoulders.

“Welcome to the club,” he says.

Okay, now, what business do I have calling this a Christmas story, when it might have happened in the springtime of that long-ago year? Well, for one thing, we lost Frank O’Mahony, my father-in-law, during the holiday season last year, so he’s in our thoughts.

But there’s more to it than that. Of the many soccer stories Frank shared over the years, this was always my favorite.

What if Bill had decided to turn mean on that young kid, and squash him from the start? What if Frank had gone home from that tryout, rejected and defeated? That kind of embitterment can darken the rest of a man’s life.

Instead, Frank got to play in the big time before cheering crowds of 80,000, and the joy of those games stayed with him for the rest of his 83 years. He was one of the most optimistic people you could ever hope to meet.

He told his tryout story time and again, and I never tired of hearing it, the way you never tire of hearing your favorite song.

“Why do you think Bill gave you that break?” I once asked.

Frank shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

Point is, we don’t have to know. It’s enough to know that it happened, that the bottomless gap between “almost” and “yes” can sink anyone’s soul, and that on a soccer field more than sixty years ago, a guy named Bill bridged that gap for a kid he didn’t even know.

A life-altering act of decency. Man, that’s what I call a gift. The kind you don’t find under a Christmas tree.

www.carilloauthor.com

MY RIDE WITH DANNY

I walk into this oh-so-hot restaurant called Columbus on the Upper West Side, and I swear, you couldn’t throw a dinner roll without hitting a celebrity.

But nobody is hotter than the guy we’re there to meet, the bigger-than-life Danny Aiello. He’s just been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in “Do The Right Thing,” and we’re hoping he’ll want to play the grandfather in the screenplay based on my novel “Shepherd Avenue.”

“If Danny wins the Oscar and agrees to play the part, the movie will get made!” says Andrew Gati, my screenwriting partner.

Well, Danny greets me with a handshake that feels like a bear hug. He loves the screenplay, and from then on, it’s like being with one of my uncles in my grandmother’s basement for Sunday dinner, except when Ben Stiller drops by to say hello, and Paul Sorvino wows the table with his spot-on imitation of Jackie Wilson.

It’s a magical night, and like all such nights, it has to come to an end.

Or so I think as I’m saying goodbye to Danny outside Columbus.

“How you getting home, Charlie?” Danny asks.

“Subway.”

“This time o’ night? Forget it. Where do you live, downtown?”

“Yeah.”

“Get in my car.”

“Danny, you don’t have to - “

“Hey, I’m goin’ to Jersey, it’s on my way to the tunnel. Come on, get in.”

The car is like a living room on wheels. Danny pops a tape into the cassette player.

“I think you’ll enjoy this, Charlie,” he says, and the sound of Danny singing show tunes fills the night. I actually have to lean back, shut my eyes and silently tell myself what’s happening:

I’m riding downtown with Oscar nominee Danny Aiello as my chauffeur, listening to him sing show tunes, hoping he’ll star in my movie…doesn’t get any better than this!!!

Well, it didn’t. The Oscar goes to Denzel Washington that year for “Glory,” “Shepherd Avenue” doesn’t get made, and now Danny has passed away at age 86.

Maybe director Frank Rainone put it best about his good friend Danny Aiello, who starred in Frank’s film “A Brooklyn State Of Mind.”

“He was,” says Frank, “a regular guy.”

Yes. A regular guy who drove me right to my door and waved goodbye before heading to Jersey.

So we never got to work together, but that’s okay. I’ll always have my ride with Danny.

www.carilloauthor.com

ALL IS CALM, ALL IS BRIGHT....LIT'RALLY

This is a tale of two Christmases - one dry, one wet, both extremely British.

The dry one happened on a Christmas morning two years ago, when I turned on the kitchen faucet and nothing came out. Not a great way to face the day, with a feast for ten to be prepared.

Neighbors started calling. “Do you have water? We lit’rally have no water!”

(Note: British women are in love with the word lit’rally. Any five-minute conversation with a British woman contains at least one lit’rally.)

A local water main break was to blame - no telling when it would be fixed. We’re not the kind of people who sit around in a situation that calls for panic, so off I hurried to the local shop - the British equivalent of a bodega - to load up on bottled water.

“As much as you can carry!” my wife shouted after me.

Well, I wasn’t looking forward to that. My mind went into New York City mode, and the unpleasantness to come: pushing and shoving, people cutting in line, maybe even a fist fight or two. The kind of mayhem they report so gleefully on Fox News.

But when I got to the shop, I was stunned. An orderly line of customers seeking water snaked out the door and halfway down the block, advancing at a pace that could only be called….civilized.

The old guy directly in front of me had to be crowding ninety - flat cap on his head, cane in hand, with a red nose that could have led Santa’s sleigh. He turned to me with a smile.

“We’ll get though this all right, I expect!” he said, his voice bouncy and cheerful.

And it hit me: this man was probably hiding with his parents under a staircase when Nazi bombs were falling on London, and rations were in effect, and Winston Churchill was urging everyone to keep calm and carry on.

Waiting for water? Big deal. At least we won’t be digging ourselves out of the rubble tomorrow!

No wonder Brits don’t mind lining up, and waiting as long as it takes for whatever they need. World War II put it in their gene codes. Stick to the rules, no matter what.

Anyway, the water main was fixed before noon, so we lit’rally didn’t need the ten Evian bottles I hauled home.

The wet Christmas happened the year before, when we were heading to Kim’s parents in the British countryside and ran smack into a flood.

No kidding - waves were lapping toward us on the highway, and the village beyond it looked like Venice. Of course, this being England, it was also raining.

The only thing to do was drive over the median barrier and head home, which meant rolling over the world’s soggiest turf. Kim gave it a shot, but the rear wheels of the car sank into the mud, spinning away.

I got out to push. I had a paper cup of coffee in one hand as I put my shoulder to the trunk - pardon me, the boot - and pushed, to no avail. Mud flew all over me. I tossed the coffee cup aside to push with both hands, and the car surged forward.

The guy behind us honked his horn. I turned to him, with the best what’s-your-problem New York face I could muster. He stuck his bulldog head out the driver side window, his jowls jiggling.

“Here now,” he said, “that won’t do!”

I didn’t know what he meant, until he pointed at my discarded coffee cup. He was letting me have it for littering, in the midst of a flood.

How British can you get? I laughed out loud, picked up the cup, waved goodbye to my self-appointed parole officer and got back in the car.

“What’s so funny?” Kim asked.

I wiped mud from my face. “Honey,” I said, “I lit’rally got yelled at for litt’ring.”

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Kindness Is Not Always A Pipe Dream

The boy liked helping his father on the job. He was only ten years old, maybe eleven, but it made him feel grown up on those Saturdays when he carried the tool box for his father.

The father was a union plumber, and the weekend freelance jobs helped him turn the corner each month, what with five kids and the horrors of the Great Depression still vivid in his memory.

On this particular Saturday a pipe had burst in the home of a woman in their Brooklyn neighborhood. When they got there the floor was flooded. The first step was to shut off the main valve, and then it was time to bear down on the real work.

There was a lot to do - the removal of the corroded pipe, the cutting and threading of a new one, fittings and flanges and soldering…hours of work, with the boy mopping up water and doing whatever else he could to be useful.

What made it tougher was a bunch of kids, running around the house, getting in the way. Little kids, none older than five or six, and now and then they could hear a baby crying.

No wonder the woman looked haggard. Divorced? Widowed? She was on her own with a houseful of kids, and Christmas just weeks away.

At last the job was done. The woman turned to the plumber.

“What do I owe you?” she asked.

The plumber smiled. “Forget it,” he said.

She couldn’t believe her ears, but he wasn’t kidding. They packed up their tools and left.

On the walk home the plumber’s son was stunned. All that work, all those hours, not to mention the materials…had his father lost his mind?

“Why didn’t you charge her, Dad?” he asked.

The plumber waved his hand behind his back, to indicate the troubled home they’d just left.

“She needs it more than I do,” he replied.

That’s worth repeating: She needs it more than I do.

The boy understood. It was a lesson he never forgot.

The boy in this story is my father, Tony Carillo. He’s a lot like my late grandfather, the plumber. I don’t think my grandfather ever began a sentence with the words “I want,” which to me is the sign of a truly rich man.

His name was Charlie Carillo. I was named after him when I was born, 64 years ago today. Best birthday gift I ever got.

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A CHRISTMAS TALE, WITHOUT PRESERVATIVES

First of all, the dog you see here isn’t the dog I’m writing about. It’s Bailey, our family dog, when he was a pup. I needed a cute pooch to get your attention.

The dog I’m writing about was a skinny mutt who lived in Greenwich Village, at Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue. Literally at Bleecker and Seventh, in the alcove entrance of a restaurant under renovation. His master was a homeless guy, and as the Christmas season approached they made do in that alcove.

At least they were sheltered from the wind, but it was cold, and when you saw them swaddled in layers of ratty old blankets you had to wonder how they were getting by.

A dog-lover named Ashton lived around the corner, and she did more than wonder, especially about the dog. So one day, she bought a sack of dog food on her way home from work.

She ventured into the alcove, sack in hand. The dog wagged his tail upon her approach, but the guy just looked at her.

“Here,” Ashton said. “I’ve got some food for your dog.”

The guy sat up straight, but made no move to reach for the bag. Was he deranged? He didn’t look deranged. Could he speak? Yes, he could.

He cleared his throat and asked, “Is it organic?”

It wasn’t. Just a run-of-the mill sack of dog food. The guy politely declined the offer, proving the old adage isn’t always right. Beggars can be choosers.

Anyway, the man and his dog moved on when the restaurant opened, possibly because the menu didn’t offer organic dishes.

www.carilloauthor.com

COULD YOU REPEAT THAT, PLEASE?

I realized things were getting desperate when I found myself cupping my hand around my ear to hear what people were saying, like an old hermit in a western movie.

Then there was the matter of the television. I had the volume up so high that a vase on the nearby glass-top table was jitterbugging toward the edge.

My wife caught the vase and said something I couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“I SAID, YOU’VE GOT TO GET YOUR EARS SORTED!”

She was right. I might get away with my condition in New York, where everybody’s yelling, but it’s different here in London. Brits tend to lose volume toward the end of their sentences, so I wind up nodding in agreement about things I can’t hear.

For all I know “Charlie, I was just wondering if you could hmm hmm hmm hmm” is actually “Charlie, I was just wondering if you could help me dispose of my wife’s body.”

It’s not just the people on the street. There’s a British TV anchorwoman I call The News Whisperer. This woman delivers her nightly reports as if she’s trying not to wake the baby.

Anyway, the last time I had my ears “sorted,” as the British say, was thirty years ago. A good old Brooklyn doctor pumped water into my ears to clear the wax. It worked, but I was so dizzy I nearly fell onto the subway tracks on my way home.

There’s a gentler system now - they actually vacuum the wax out of your ear canal.

“It’s worth a shot,” my wife said.

“What?”

“I said…never mind. GO AND GET IT DONE!”

The cheerful British ear technician shoved a cone into my right ear, shined a light in there and let out a low whistle.

That’s never a good sign.

The left ear was no better. Basically, I had a candle in each ear canal. They had to be softened with olive oil (yes, olive oil!), and it took an hour of vacuuming to get all the wax out.

But I could hear again. Praise the lord, I could hear!

I stepped outside and was jolted by an explosive ringing in my pocket. It was my cell phone, which I’d never heard before.

“HOW’D IT GO?” my wife screamed.

“Fine!” I said, holding the phone at arm’s length. “You don’t have to shout anymore!”

A roaring sound, like a plane coming in for an emergency landing! Yikes! But it was only the arrival of the double-decker bus that would take me home.

I was really looking forward to this ride, because the thing I missed most during my deaf days was eavesdropping.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve always loved other people’s conversations. The inadvertent humor, the jagged language, the complaining, the crazy hopes and dreams….what’s better than that?

So I took a seat in the midst of a pack of commuters, eager to listen in, but I’d forgotten how much the world has changed since I Iast had my ears sorted.

Nobody was talking. Everybody was texting. I could hear that, all right - click-click, click-click. Kind of dull, to tell you the truth. Nothing to wax eloquent about. www.carilloauthor.com

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

I look down the bar and I think, Oh, wow, that’s her!

This is at the Lion’s Head, a Greenwich Village joint best known as a bar for drinkers with writing problems. There are plenty of them around on this night, but the woman I’m staring at is a photographer, and she’s just published a kick-ass book called Street Cops, and the best way to describe it is to say that she went out and lived it with New York’s Finest.

You look at Jill Freedman’s photos and you feel as if you’re there, and if there’s something better you can say about a photographer’s work, I’d like to know what it is.

So I go over and introduce myself, a rookie reporter with the New York Post, and I’m like a groupie. All I can do is gush about her work.

Which beats the hell out of my work. My beat (if you can call it that) is the Wingo contest, and the pictures that go with my stories show smiling New Yorkers holding up their winning game cards. Nothing that’ll ever hang in a museum.

But check out the cover photo on Street Cops.

Two lawmen, belly to belly. The cop on the left has his hand on his gun, because something’s about to happen in that narrow hallway, something dangerous, but not dangerous enough for the guy on the right to put down his cigar. Because after all, why waste a good cigar if this ends without violence?

Come on. How New York can you get? It’s not just a photograph. It’s a short story. And this book is full of them.

Anyway, we talk for an hour or so, and Jill is funny and gracious, with twinkling eyes and an elfin smile. We leave the Lion’s Head at the same time. A gentle snow is falling, landing just so on her wool cap.

We shake hands and exchange a brief hug on Sheridan Square. She goes her way and I go mine.

That’s nearly forty years ago. I never saw her again, but that night came alive in my mind today with the sad news that Jill Freedman is dead at 79.

And what I remember most from that special night is watching her go - the snowflakes on her cap, her shoulders hunched against the cold, and her footprints on that sidewalk, the whispery kind you make when the snow has just started to stick. A totally New York image, a story in black and white. Kind of like one of her photographs.

www.carilloauthor.com

ICE GUYS FINISH LAST

Three times a week, my 93-year-old father plays a very special kind of tennis.

“Social tennis,” he calls it. The guys he plays with are amazingly durable men, most of them in their eighties and nineties. They play doubles, and not one of them has served and volleyed since the Nixon administration.

You can hear their game as you approach the courts, the steady “pok……pok…..pok” of polite, unhurried points.

It’s kind of like oversized ping-pong. These guys have good strokes, and if tennis courts were the width of bowling alleys they might have made it at Wimbledon, back in the day,

But tennis courts are a lot wider than bowling alleys, and as for chasing the ball on those wide shots….well, it just doesn’t happen. And some of them consider it rude to hit an outright winner.

Not exactly a page from Federer’s playbook, but it works for them.

I was watching these guys play on a blisteringly hot morning last week and after just one set, a few of them were tapped out. They were down to three players, so they were desperate for a fourth.

You guessed it - they turned to me. “The Kid,” as they call me. (I’m 63.)

Just like that, a racket was shoved into my hand, and I was drafted into the game I’d barely played in 15 years. My father and I were partners, and on top of that, I was serving! Didn’t even take any practice serves. Here it comes, guys!

We won the first three points. I was proud of myself. I kept the ball in play, didn’t try to pass anybody. It was kind of fun. Figured I could show these guys a thing or two, once I loosened up.

Then it happened - a drop shot, to my side of the net. I’d pulled a hamstring a few weeks earlier and it was just about healed. I’d been careful not to do any running, until I saw that drop shot.

I rushed to return it, a 1973 impulse that my 2019 body paid for. It felt as if the muscle had been ripped off the bone as I limped to the sidelines, where I flopped on a bench, breathing hard.

I’d violated the number one commandment of this brand of tennis: Thou Shalt Not Run . The correct way to handle a drop shot is to wait for the ball to stop rolling, then pick it up.

My father, who still moves like a young leopard, came over to check me out with another player, a 90-something retired surgeon.

“Sorry guys,” I said, clutching my throbbing thigh. “I’m out.”

“Make sure you ice it,” the surgeon said. (Which I’m pretty sure counted as a house call.)

And as I limped home for Mom’s sympathy, an ice pack and a couple of Aleves I could hear that inevitable sound, fading in the distance:

Pok……pok……pok.

The game goes on, even though I can’t.

https://www.amazon.com/MOON-CAKE-Charlie-Carillo-ebook/dp/B07TT8LZ58

MOON CAKE HAS LANDED!

Exactly a year ago I had this idea about a troubled teenager who’s obsessed by the Apollo 11 moon mission in the summer of 1969, and right away I realized two things:

One, my story was going to be restricted by historical facts and dates.

And two, I was going to have to self-publish - there wouldn’t be any time to peddle this tale if I wanted to get it out there for the 50th anniversary of that unforgettable accomplishment.

So I started scribbling in my yellow notebooks. Bits and pieces, in no particular order. Characters popped up suddenly, like dandelions after a spring rain. I was working on other things as well, but the moon book was where I breathed.

Eventually I had seven notebooks full of….well, notes.

Bits of chapters, dialogues, random rants…. I probably threw half of it away. And now I’d have to stitch the surviving words into a quilt, which was hard enough, and then came the really tricky part: making the stitches disappear.

Don’t know if I succeeded, but I think it’s a fairly seamless story, and as for being restricted by historical facts? Actually, it went the other way. Whenever I felt lost at sea there was always another moon mission event to paddle toward. A literary lighthouse, so to speak.

Anyway, it’s done, with a dazzling cover photo by Dennis O’Brien and a breathtaking design by Catherine Allen.

To paraphrase the late great Neil Armstrong, Moon Cake has landed. Now all I can do is hope it takes off.

Over and out from mission control.

The link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TT8LZ58?fbclid=IwAR23LD2gi_EboUO24l79VROEYpnwKAgMbpw2-zB_oeSr4h9jJl1QlsLy5x8

ONE OF A KIND

I was just out of college, painting houses for a living, and one day when an outdoor job was rained out I went home, put on the TV and saw Steve Dunleavy on Good Morning America, promoting his book “Elvis: What Happened?”

It was just days after the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll died, and this tell-all book was jumping off the shelves. But Dunleavy was determined to make it jump even faster.

Who’s this crazy guy? I thought as he shamelessly waved his book in front of the camera, got into an argument with Geraldo Rivera and seemed as pompous as his pompadour.

Wrong impression. I found that out a few weeks later when I quit painting houses and landed a job as a copyboy at the New York Post, where Dunleavy ruled.

He’d bound into the newsroom each day like a frisky hound, a smile on his face, a carnation in his lapel, rubbing his hands as he sat down, eager to take the First Amendment out for a little joy ride.

“Any messages?” he’d ask the desk assistant. “Irate readers, angry politicians, enraged husbands?”

We spoke for the first time when he asked me to get him a ham sandwich. He was on the phone with a reporter, totally preoccupied with whatever story was happening, so he just dug all the cash from his wallet and handed it to me.

Forty or fifty bucks, for a ham sandwich. Steve never worried much about money, or maybe this was a test, to see if I’d bring him the right change.

Which I did. Maybe that’s one reason I eventually got a tryout as a reporter. I was young, I was green, and I made a mistake in the early going, for which Executive Editor Roger Wood was ready to fire my ass. Steve stepped in.

“It was my fault, Roger,” he said, and just like that, my job was saved.

He took a bullet for me. After that, I was willing to dive on grenades for the guy, as were so many of us at The Post.

Turns out my previous working history came in handy, because sometimes a tabloid story can call for a little bit of a paint job, if not a total whitewash.

Like a political story I was assigned to write, a hatchet job on a candidate the Post hated. Steve punched up my story on his computer, read the first few paragraphs and turned to me.

“Tut-tut, mate,” he scolded, “you’re trying to be fair.”

Oh well.

And there was a crazy night at Jimmy Day’s in the Village, where a bunch of us from the paper were drinking into the wee hours when suddenly the plate glass window right behind us shattered.

A bullet? What else could it be? Dunleavy rose like a general from his bar stool.

“Let’s go after him!” he cried, and off Steve marched off into the night, while the rest of us marched in place in the bar.

He was funny, he was smart, he was loyal, he was brave, and he was one of a kind. He had a substantial TV career but a print guy is always a print guy, and that’s how I’ll always remember Steve Dunleavy.

And who knows? Could be that right now, he’s up there asking Elvis: What happened?

www.carilloauthor.com

WADE IN CHELSEA

Went to dinner last night at a Notting Hill restaurant featured in the TV show "Made In Chelsea" and after waiting nearly an hour for our table, we were told that the kitchen was out of commission. Which was just as well, because that's when water started falling from cracks in the ceiling.

No kidding - a pipe must have burst.

Can't remember the name of the place, and I had water in my eyes as we fled the flood so I couldn't read the sign, but anyone who books there for the ambience should eat first and request a table in a no-dripping section.

FAREWELL, FRANK

The first time I met my future father-in-law he was working the garden at his beautiful home in the English countryside, not far from the sea. A former pro football player, he’d remained as big and strong as he was in his playing days, and now here he was, meeting the New York guy with designs on his daughter, Kim.

It was just the two of us - Frank O’Mahony turning the soil, me watching. We were making small talk, getting to know each other in that cautious, circular way males try to figure each other out, when suddenly his lovely wife, Betty, called us in for coffee.

“Let’s go inside,” Frank said cheerfully. He took the pitchfork he’d been working with and slammed it into the ground, inches from my toes.

All four prongs were instantly buried, right to the hilt.

Long prongs. And the ground was not soft.

Believe me, I got the message. Mess with my daughter, and you’ll be sorry….

Funny first impression, because the truth is, I was never in danger with Frank. It wouldn’t take long for me to learn that he was as kind and fair a person as I’d ever know.

I also thought he was indestructible, which makes news of his death at 83 even harder to take.

Frank, who’d faced overwhelming odds to beat pancreatic cancer thirteen years ago, was hit by a stroke last February. In the months to follow there were endless trips to the hospital, one of which happened in the midst of World Cup fever.

The Uber driver was a rabid England fan, wearing the team colors and ranting about the games ahead. Frank never boasted on himself, so I did it for him.

“This guy played for Chelsea,” I told the driver. Which was a mistake, because in his excitement he nearly went off the road.

When the driver steadied himself he started asking Frank about what it was like to play in the big time. Frank told the guy about the rough-and-tumble game he knew, back in the ‘50s. Not like these players today, multi-millionaires who fall down if you breathe on them!

“It was really great on rainy days,” Frank said.

That surprised the driver. “Rainy days?” he asked.

“Oh yeah,” Frank said. “The pitch would get all muddy, and you could stand on the defender’s foot and never get called for it!”

And I thought: How fantastic is that! Frank isn’t boasting about any of the big goals he scored - he’s bragging about putting one over on the referee!

Which was always part of Frank’s appeal - his capacity for mischief and merriment, no matter how gloomy things looked.

Like the time I took him to check out his local gym, a few months ago. It was Frank’s kind of place - no frills, a real spit-and-sawdust joint. Frank’s aching hip kept him in a wheelchair, so I rolled him inside and he greeted the young manager as if they’d gone to school together.

“Got a punch bag, by any chance?” Frank asked.

It was hanging in the corner. I rolled Frank to the bag, thinking he just wanted to inspect it.

Next thing I knew I was holding on tightly to the wheelchair handles while Frank bashed that bag as if it owed him money - dozens of rapid-fire punches, from a sitting position! The manager couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Right!” Frank said, rubbing his knuckles on our way out. “I’ll be back to join up, I live around the corner.”

“Okay, Frank,” the manager chuckled.

Frank died not long after that. Literally and figuratively, he went down punching.

And I remembered a conversation we’d had about The Big Sleep, many years ago. We’d both been raised Catholic, with priests and nuns telling us all about heaven and hell, the immortal soul - the whole shebang.

“I was trained to believe in all that,” Frank said. “But then the scientific side of my brain takes over, and asks - how can it be?”

We came to the same conclusion, summed up in three words: Who really knows?

But I’ll tell you something I do know, which happened a few days after we lost Frank. I was up early to take a run, and my eyes fell upon Frank’s running shoes.

Well, why not? We were the same size.

I grabbed his shoes. “Come on, Frank,” I said, lacing them up. “Let’s take a little trot.”

And those shoes carried me to that spit-and-sawdust gym Frank liked so much. I told the manager the sad news. His jaw dropped, and his eyes misted over.

“I’m really sorry,” he said.

And I thought: He means it. This guy only knew Frank for fifteen minutes, and he’s truly grieving.

Of course he was. You don’t meet people like Frank O’Mahony every day, and when you do, you don’t forget them. And being remembered is a kind of immortality.

How about that, Frank? Maybe the nuns and priests were right, after all.