I got there early to try and grab a table ahead of the Sunday Church crowd, since we were expecting 10 or so.

But before going in I just had to check the wall outside.

Yep, still there.

Scrawled in green kids-menu crayon on the wall next to the steps, in my son’s eight-year-old hand.

Be Back Soon!

I still remember giving Peter crap when he committed the act of vandalism so many years ago, during one of our family’s legendary long goodbyes on the back porch of Meloni’s Italian Restaurant. Feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago.

For decades, young children and in-laws alike have grown restless on Meloni’s back porch, waiting for the family’s extended farewell scenes to fade to the blacktop of the parking lot. Mom was never in a hurry to let a celebration end.

And when it came to family goodbyes, no one could filibuster like Anna Margaret Riddell.

The process would begin inside the restaurant … with the Table Hugs, which, to the untrained eye, read like actual Goodbyes. In reality they only marked the initiation of the “Fixin’ to Leave” phase — kind of like a stretching of the goodbye hamstrings. In the classic version of the ritual, Mom, blood pressure freshly elevated from the family fistfight to pick up the check (she hated to lose, and swore vengeance when she did), would initiate a deceptive first round of hugs at the site of the first person arising from their chair. Owing to the mastery of her craft, she’d sometimes manage a second loop around the table before she escorted, or was escorted by, the last to leave.

Once we got Mom to the porch, the goodbye clock didn’t formally start until she had her post-meal cigarette, which she took on one of the stone benches to the side of the awning. In an effort to move things along, the family was not above deploying Operation: Grandchild Sacrifice … where we’d order one of the grandkids “to go smoke with Grandma,” when we sensed the table was itching to break up.

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Ever since I can remember, back to the days when I played the roll of the family’s restless eight-year-old, Meloni’s was always THE PLACE for family celebrations.

Whenever we had a reason to celebrate, no discussion was ever needed. And no one ever argued the choice.

Our family has gathered around one of their signature long tables to celebrate visits from relatives (where the fistfights over the checks rivaled Ali-Frazier), light birthday candles, cut anniversary cakes, and open graduation cards. My nieces and nephews and I literally grew up around the long table immediately to the left of the restaurant’s side entrance.

A long Meloni’s table was always the perfect (and safest) place to introduce new boyfriends and girlfriends to our loving, idiosyncratic family. As years passed, we’ve table-hugged those boyfriends and girlfriends into husbands and wives, and eventually, into parents of their own.

It’s where Karry and I announced our wedding plans to my family.

It’s where Mom and Dad celebrated their 50^th anniversary.

It’s where the family gathered after Mom’s memorial service.

It’s where my sisters and brother gathered in June on what would’ve been my parents’ 67^th wedding anniversary.

A major reason it’s remained so special to us over the years is that is has changed so little. It first opened in 1950. And it’s to the credit of the previous and current owners that they recognized a good thing when they tasted it.

It’s the kind of place every small town worth its red sauce has, had or should have.

Red checker cloth tables. Stenciled Italian scenes running along painted white walls that meet wood paneling. Dimly lit wooden bar lined with tall red stools and flanked by classic green booths along a wall blooming with old photos.

Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra supplying a crackly soundtrack. The smell of an old social hall scented by decades of home made boiling red sauce.

The atmosphere nourishes every bit as much as the food.

The menu might as well be carved on stone tablets, as it hasn’t had reason to change in years. It reads like a Shakespeare sonnet (no wasted syllables), and each of us has memorized our favorite parts.

Salad is a given for just about everyone, either as a side or as an antipasta entre. Technically speaking, Meloni’s homemade bleu cheese dressing is the true given. The salad part is merely a conveyance for the dressing, which is so sublime, I must now pause for a moment of silence out of respect….

Mom would always insist that I order the Veal Parm, though I seldom needed the nudge. Tuesday Night Veal Night is a Uniontown institution. For years, one of my favorite parts of Facebook has been seeing an old friend from the neighborhood post ritual checks-in with his Dad for Veal Night.

Dad swore by their spaghetti with meat sauce and meat balls. He swore more loudly on takeout occasions when he got home to discover they gave him marinara or dropped a ball. Speaking of takeout … back in the day, you could bring your own pot from home for Meloni’s to fill with pasta and sauce. Raising four young kids in the early 60’s, Mom and Dad brought home more than a few pots. Dad also lovingly recalled the years when Meloni’s served as the place where the local dance musicians would gather in the wee hours after weekend gigs … to talk shop and tell stories before heading home.

I can remember my first memories … the ritual of parking in the Sherwin Williams lot (where Dad was the store manager), and walking across the street so we could enter through their magical side entrance. The climb up their long, narrow, low-ceiling corridor felt like a secret passage. The olfactory crescendo that built as the hallway elbowed left (allowing you to steal a glance through the kitchen window to your right). The door that spat you out at the front of the restaurant, where the early arrivers announced your presence with a yell, triggering Opening Hugs.

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I was the early arriver last Sunday. Succeeded in grabbing us a long table ahead of the church crowd. Kissed my three sisters and hugged my brother upon their arrivals. My nephew Kenny was, fittingly, the last to arrive. A former restless-eight-year-old himself, he accompanied his beautiful wife, Maria, a former new-girlfriend-at-the-table, and their indescribably adorable 11-month old son, (Little) Kenny, who will become a big brother himself next year.

We were in no hurry to order, though perusing the menus was little more than a perfunctory act. Salads, antipastas, pastas. I debated for a hot minute, and waited for Mom’s voice in my head to encourage me to order the Veal Parm.

There was an extra seat at the long table, allowing us to switch seats so we could catch up with everybody throughout the meal. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, we just ogled over Little Kenny.

We were in no hurry to leave. Conversation was dessert.

Laurie mitigated the fistfight over the check by picking up the bill when no one was looking. I gave her some crap for it, like Mom might have (minus the swear words). It felt like quoting a scene from a favorite movie.

Laurie then asked everyone to raise their glass, and we leaned them across the table to clink to Mom and Dad.

Then came the table hugs, before we made our way through the mostly-empty dining room, having long outlasted the post-church crowd.

And we paused on the porch, initiating another round of hugs that, by my calculations, lasted exactly one cigarette long.

As the scene unfolded in front of her, Maria spoke for generations of in-laws and young children alike, when she said quietly to herself, “Oh, I thought we already said goodbyes inside.”

It’s nice to know that, after all these years, the filibuster can still sneak up on the unsuspecting.

Before the scene faded to the blacktop of the parking lot, I checked the wall again. Brushed my hand across the fading kids’ menu green crayon graffiti, allowing the eight-year-old version of myself to exchange a high-five with my former eight-year-old.

Unconsciously, I spoke the words aloud, and they came out as a prayer … for hopefully generations to come.

Be Back Soon.

Ninety-nine cents, or two dollars?

That was the biggest financial decision that that the nine and 10-year-old boys from our neighborhood faced on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis in the summer of 1979.

Which rubber coated baseball to buy?

Option A: The 99-cent K-Mart special … which, candidly, possessed few redeeming qualities beyond its price tag. Had a cork center that, when you bounced it, made a harsh sound that pretty much expressed aloud its lack of interest in returning to your hand. Had maybe had three or four good swats in it before it would go completely lopsided.

Option B: The $2 Wilson Comet … the Cadillac of Rubber Coated baseballs … consistently produced the truest, juiciest, hops in the universe, of which Areford playground was indisputably the center of, in that magical summer of ‘79. You could mash a Comet forever and it never lost its shape. I can still remember the sensation of this one time I met the Comet with the sweet spot of my trusty, 28” aluminum bat just right … barreling it back through the box for a ground rule double before the centerfielder even had time to turn and give chase. That feeling still lives in my wrists … and, not only that, still jockeys for position in my top 10 all-time physical sensations.

So, on the surface, the choice might seem like a no-brainer … pay the extra buck and call it a long afternoon. But on the surface of Areford playground, which was pure, unadulterated asphalt, it was a surprisingly nuanced decision.

Really, the choice between the indestructible Wilson and the very combustible K-Mart special came down to who was going to be playing that day.

If the lineups were going to be full, the K-Mart special was the rational choice.

A fuller lineup meant more of the older boys, and by older I mean older than my nine-year-old self. More of my elders meant more home runs, meaning a greater probability that the ball would get lost. See, a lot of bad things could happen to a ball once it cleared the straight chain link fence that bordered the outfield.

In right, it could roll under the locked fence of the football field. And though a fence was far from a deterrent to any upstanding citizen of our neighborhood, we’d proved that point often enough at Areford for the township to emphasize its preference by stringing barbed wire across the fence top.

In center, it could get lost in the tall weeds in front of the old gym. And Jeff Hughes said he once saw a snake over there, and once was enough to dampen our curiosity in disproving his theory.

Down the line in left, we’d have to root through the neighbor’s yard. And our having plunked a few off their house rendered the adult inhabitants slightly less hospitable than, say, the bleacher bums in Wrigley field who graciously tossed home runs back onto the field.

Conversely, if the lineups were going to be thin, thin enough where we’d have to play pitcher’s hand, or opposite field out (translation: if we couldn’t fill out the right side of the infield and outfield), we’d be inclined to spring for the Wilson. Thinner lineups meant fewer older boys, which meant fewer home runs, increasing the likelihood that a $2 ball might survive until we’d have to head home for supper.

But the $2 for a Wilson got you more than just the ball. See, you couldn’t get the Comets at K-Mart. For the Cadillac, you had to make a pilgrimage to the baseball room in the back of Dice’s Sporting Goods store on the corner of Main and Morgantown in downtown Uniontown. Dice’s was as close to heaven for a nine year old as Kevin Costner’s cornfield was to his character in Field of Dreams.

After tingling the bell on the front door, and subsequently unsuccessfully petitioning one’s Dad for a cold glass bottle of soda from the pop machine just to the right of the entrance, one matriculated through the front of the store, past the apparel and paraphernalia of all the other incidental sports (you know, like football) to the back room — The Inner Sanctum. Where one was greeted with the leathery smell of gloves stacked higher than cornstalks all along the right side. While my dad chatted with the owners, I’d fish out all the left handed models and try ‘em on, pound my fist into the Reggie Jackson or Steve Carlton autograph in the palm of it, and draw a deep intoxicating whiff.

The whole left side of the room was nothing but bats — real wooden bats – laid horizontally in boxes on shelves, their length in inches numbered on the handles that peeked out from their cardboard box containers. I can remember the summer when I graduated from 27” … to where a 28” felt just right in my hands … you’d slide one out, sometimes just to hear that glorious sound of wood sliding against wood, just like a big leaguer pulling one out of their personal shelf. And the first thing you’d do is check to see whose name was scrawled into the top … as if the name testified to the quality of the lumber. For the record, I still have my 28” Pete Rose.

Ninety-nine per-cent of the time, I’d be lucky if I had the $2 for the ball, so would invariably have to put the gloves and bats back. But on the rare occasion where I might have enough loose change from that week’s lemonade sale, I’d open up the magical un-marked drawer that contained a compliment of resin bags.

Didn’t matter that we played slow pitch with a rubber-coated baseball on an asphalt playground. The chance to procure a powdery plume of powder bouncing a resin bag on your hand before breaking into the windup of whatever pitcher you happened to be that day … just added to the fantasy.

Because we didn’t play as ourselves.

This was ’79.

One through nine, we were The Antelope. Tim Foli. The Cobra. Captain Willie. Mad Dog. The Hammer. Scrap Iron. Ed Ott, and The Candy Man. And wherever we were in the lineup or on the field, we considered it our solemn duty to faithfully recreate their every tick and mannerism.

From Stargell’s signature windup, Parker’s threatening coil, or Milner’s stoic, stone-faced, presentation to the pitcher… to their defensive equivalencies — the way Moreno glided under a pop-fly to squeeze it textbook with two hands, or how Parker defiantly, non-chalanted his putouts one-handed, sometimes with a snap that left our fathers cussing his show-boating while secretly revering his athletic brilliance.

We even took the opposing teams seriously. Between the hundred of packs of baseball cards we procured from the Dairy Mart, and WWOR Channel 12, which carried the Mets (and, more importantly, Saturday morning WWF Wrestling), we knew opposing teams lineups almost as well. We’d meet on Mullen Street and walk the two blocks up to the playground, which gave us just enough time to carve up the opposing team’s lineup. I remember one summer weekday walking past a neighbor’s house while choosing from the Mets roster. Since I was a mere fourth grader, most of the good players were picked by the time I got to choose. So on that day I announced I’d be Joel Youngblood, the Mets catcher. Old Jack Simenna, who lived a few houses down from us, heard me, and from that day forward, even into my adulthood, called me Youngblood every time he saw me. I don’t think he ever knew my real name. It was always, “Heyyyyyy Youngblood.”

But when my team got to be the Pirates, I was always Omar Moreno, mostly because the older kids picked Stargell, Parker and Madlock … and I had zero power. For the record, I didn’t hit a single home run over the home-team-friendly fence that year, but I did hit 13 inside-the-parkers and batted a robust .625 out of Omar’s crouch. I know this because after returning home, but before washing my hands for dinner, I’d write down my statistics from every game we played in a spiral notebook. While cleaning out my old room at my parents’ house earlier this year, I found my stat sheet. As Casey Stengel might say, you could look it up.

An although very few K-Mart specials or Comets were harmed in the pursuit of my batting average, my teammates were not as kind with our investments.

See, there were a shitload lot of home runs hit in the summer of 79. The home run chase, the only officially recognized statistic on the asphalt, was really a four-horse race between the fifth grade regulars: Kevin, Jeff, Brian, Scott. I watched with awe and reverence as their totals climbed in excess of 200 apiece, or so they claimed. It was a self-reporting system that technically relied on, though didn’t expect too terribly much from, the honor system. And as history records, the 1970’s were far from immune to inflation. As home run totals skyrocketed and the race tightened the deeper we got into summer, the fuller the rosters became. This was due in no small part to the desire to keep your competitors from claiming they hit 12-home runs the day you weren’t there. As the race got more serious, we found ourselves procuring, and, therefore losing, a lot more Wilson Comets. And subsequently bumming from our parents in $2 increments with greater frequency, knowing we’d need at least two or three balls to get us through an afternoon. As I recall, Kevin and Jeff distanced themselves from the rest, benefitting from the fact that their families didn’t go on extended summer vacations, while Brian’s and Scott’s did.

For the record, in the days when one could count on a field full of buddies and an ample supply of Comets, one really didn’t care that one’s family never went on summer vacation.

The summer of 1979 was not only the last time the Pirates won the World Series, but it was also our last glorious summer on the asphalt.

As fate would have it, the following season the community baseball league widened its geography to pull from our township, and so we were all swept into Little League.

Uniforms. Baseballs with seams. Fields with dirt and grass. Umpires. Parents. Coaches.

The first thing that Mr. Meadows did was break me from my Omar Moreno crouch.

For the record, I never hit .625 again.

But I’ll bet you two dollars and whatever lemonade stand change still jingling in my piggy bank that if we met on a summer afternoon on Mullen Street … I could still carve up two 1979 rosters in the time it would take us to climb the two hills to the asphalt of Areford playground.

Memories like that bounce back as true and reliable as a Wilson Comet.

As the youngest, by 10-15 years, of five kids, I grew up looking up.

My older brother and sisters were well on their way to doing adult things when I was at my most impressionable. Before I was 10, my oldest sister Kim had been a Marine, my sister Laurie, married. I held them all in some measure of awe, particularly my brother.

He baptized me at the altar of football. Taught me the sacrament of swearing at the Steelers on Sunday afternoons, Toughened me up (translation: beat the crap out of me) on hundreds of downs of goal-line drills in the living room (he= Jack Lambert; me = Preston Pearson). Ran me ragged running down-and-outs, down-out-and-ups, and posts on the street outside our house, coaxing me well beyond my appetite with pleas of ‘just one more,’ and ‘last one,’ which were seldom what they claimed.

He was responsible for my early musical education. The early lessons came packaged in the 8-track tapes sporting labels faded from wear, and in the FM radio, whose strains wafted from the basement where he lifted weights to the top of the steps where I sat and listened. From his example I learned every word of the hymns of my youth … Clapton, the Doors, the Doobies. The ceiling on early cool for me was riding co-pilot in his immaculate powder blue Buick on summer afternoons, windows down, stereo wide open, while he did his best Jim Morrison on the opening verse of LA Woman.

He was the first mythic figure of my youth. He had an ornery streak, a turn of phrase that pushed the boundaries of euphemism. He and his buddies found a lot of trouble in their fun in their rowdier moments. I remember him coming home one weekend night with a black eye, a sucker punch that, before the transaction was complete, he made sure the sucker regretted. I wish I could forget the aromas in our bedroom on Saturday mornings after his late Friday nights. His football buddies seemed larger than life, in character as well as stature. I hung on every word of his stories of adventure with his band of rogues, and committed them to memory just like the bits from the R-rated Steve Martin albums he let me listen to.

I was also on the receiving end of some of his ornery streak. I remember a school night in seventh grade when I heard him giggling downstairs (we share versions of the same high-pitched giggle when we get wound up). I didn’t discover the source of his mirth until I was at my locker the next morning, when Tom Rocks nearly doubled over in laughter while pointing at my winter coat. I looked down to find my lapel monogrammed with green felt letters spelling out, “Mr. Shitbar.” (I just high-pitch-giggled writing that). Though I initially feared expulsion if discovered, I wore it like a badge for a few days, until our Mom discovered it, ripping the letters off, and him a new one. In full disclosure, being on the receiving end of his ornery streak had its advantages, too. Exhibit A: the six-packs of Heineken I’d find under the Christmas Tree during my teenage years.

He taught me that there was a world beyond the streets of my neighborhood. Aside from our family’s epic Bicentennial excursion to Gettysburg, our family never went on vacation. During his grad school years at WVU, he always reserved a late-summer day for us to road trip to Morgantown to pick up Mountaineer gear. I considered those sacred pilgrimages.  Though I’m tempted to blush at the humble geography involved, I can’t overstate how magical those trips were to my pre-teen self, or how cool I thought myself wearing my WVU gear to junior high. After all, I had brought them back myself from exotic far-off lands (ha).

He made time for me even after he got married. When he and Maur got their first apartment in Hopwood, he’d invite Dad and me out to watch Steeler games on Sundays. I remember shooting .22 after the games in the back yard (which was a great way to burn off the frustrations of those mid-80’s Steeler teams.). I also remember one Saturday night when he gave me and a buddy the keys to their apartment while they were out on a date … and full access to his epic stash of video rentals he’d copied on his wickedly awesome two-VCR set-up. The epic-ness of the experience can only be appreciated when remembering that video rental stores were the only way to see movies outside the theater in those days. (Those were the years when HBO pretty much stood for, “Hey, Beastmaster’s On.”). I remember me and my buddy making our own nachos and watching my first screening of The Breakfast Club, with a Chuck Norris chaser. Saturday night boy cave nirvana.

I remember seeing my brother as a father for the first time. Remember Mom and Dad whisking me with them to the hospital to meet their first grandson. Remember awkwardly extending a handshake to my brother when he came out of the operating room to greet us. He ignored my gesture, and, instead scooped me up in the biggest big bear hug and said, “I’m afraid a  handshake’s just not going to cut it, bud.”

A version of that hug has marked our every greeting and goodbye since.

For The Win 

And I remember, a year later, on my 16th birthday, playing him one-on-one in our tiny, walled driveway. Since it was barely single-car wide, and since he had a good 40-50 pounds on me, the postage stamp size court heavily favored his girth over my moves.  For 15 years, I had been the Washington Generals to his Harlem Globetrotters, with him teaching me humility over and over (and over). But we hadn’t played each other in a while, with most of his time of late being soaked up by new parenthood. I’d gotten a little better since the last time we played … my shot a bit more practiced, his showing some rust. I got up on him early. Answered every one of his baskets with one of my own.  I was on my way to beating him for the first time in my life. I think we both felt it, and it pushed each of us harder. But his competitive streak always had deeper grooves than mine. He went full bore, contesting every drive, every shot. With the winning score within my reach, I drove left, and he moved quickly to cut off my path. As he did so, it forced me into the wall of the driveway, where my left hand met the corner of the top block, busting it open. It began bleeding pretty good, and the depth of the gash prompted a trip to the ER, where it earned a few stitches.

I remember Mom being super pissed at him for being too rough on me, a refrain she could trace back to those years-ago knee football contests in the living room.

I never blamed him for any part of it. He was giving me his best, and making sure my first win wouldn’t come cheaply. He was more than holding up the Big Brother end of the bargain.

For the record, since we didn’t finish, neither of us counted it as a win in my favor.

For the record, we never played again.

Though I was trying like hell to beat him at the time … looking back, I’m kinda’ glad that we never finished the game.

My brother was always, and in many ways still is, my hero. For all the reasons above, and a million reasons more.

I’m not so blind to believe that he was or is perfect. He’ll be the first to admit that.

But not many heroes get to retire with a perfect record.

Mine did.

And I have the scar to prove it.

On the occasion of his birthday, I suppose I could’ve just dropped a card in the mail. But, to borrow a phrase …

I’m afraid a handshake’s just not going to cut it, bud.

Love,

Mr. Shitbar