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An unusual alignment of my past, present and future took place last evening. I had been out gathering signatures for my Alderman petitions, a hot and mouth-drying process this time of year, and as dusk was bringing my constituent-bothering to a close, I found myself on Yeoman Street, and so dropped into the Irish American Club, a rare visit these days.
I confronted the usual mix of familiar and semi-familiar faces in what is still about the only public place where I can feel comfortable being me, and ordered a Harp, much like the fictional character Neil Hughes in my murder mystery The Evil Has Landed.
And standing next to me, offering a friendly hug, was Stephen Mezzio.
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Back in 1966, three of us fourteen going on fifteen classmates found ourselves in the awkward position of experiencing puberty at the same time our forty-something mothers were giving birth to their final children. My brother Sean came first, on May the 9th, Stephen Mezzio three days later (which became the subject of three less-than-epic poems by R. Poeta) and Anthony Montenaro in October. And I think just after that Mrs. Mezzio became a grandmother for the first time as well.
Mary Alice Mezzio and Peter Montenaro and I were all friends, as I have written about often, and the two of them eventually married, making Stephen and Anthony sort of relatives, and as the years went by Anthony and Sean became classmates and good friends, and the altar servers at our wedding.
Stephen's dad and our dad were long time friends and shared a common affliction: lousy hearts. They alternated with their open-heart surgeries and artificial valves. Each was told that it was very unlikely they would ever suffer heart attacks or strokes. So Dad had the heart attack, and Mike Mezzio the strokes. Dad died first, at 52 when Sean was eight, and Mike a couple of years later, also in his fifties.
Less than a month later, Stephen's older brother David (two years older than us, in my brother Jay's class) and a couple of other lads took Stephen on a Spring canoe ride on the Mohawk River, before the Barge Canal dams were down for the season. They ran the rapids at the Tribes Hill-Fort Hunter bridge, the canoe flipped, and only Stephen made it to shore.
Another wake, another funeral.
Later that same year, I bumped into Mrs. Mezzio coming out of the back door at the Amsterdam Savigs Bank on Division Street. She hugged me.
"Bob, I'm leaving. I can't take it any more. We're moving to Arizona."
For several years she kept the place on Route 5s as her "Upstate New York summer cottage," and so Stephen was able to maintain his childhood friendships, including his chum from kindergarten, Robbie Phelps. Even after the "cottage" was sold, he continued to come up here, often staying at Pete and Donna's.
Years flew by, and eventually the now adult Robbie Phelps decided to make a life for himself in Arizona as well. He and Stephen remained fast friends, even sharing living quarters until eventually Stephen got married and three's a crowd.
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So, that's what brought Stephen back home, following his friend's body from Arizona to his final resting place in the soft earth of Green Hill Cemetery.
On Monday, before the wake, Mary and I had stopped at Karen's Produce for lunch, and brought the ice cream with us to the Schoharie boat launch. We sat at a picnic table overlooking the pleasant confluence of the Schoharie Creek and the Mohawk River, just a bit downstream from the ruins of the Erie Canal Aquaduct which carried Clinton's Ditch over the sometimes treacherous waters, maybe a quarter of a mile from the Thruway Bridge which replaced the one that collapsed twenty-some years ago, sending ten cars and passengers to their sudden end.
We finished up, walked around a bit and headed back to the car. Something caught my eye. I wandered over to a monument I had never noticed before, a memorial to David Mezzio and the others, and all who perished on the creek and river.
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We chatted for a long time, Stephen and I. He grew up to be a fine young man, as did Anthony. As did Sean.
As did Robbie.
 
Buy my murder mystery The Evil Has Landed
and don't forget The Judge Report (THE BOOK) is now available, too!
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