Matt Kindelmann

I was born in the middle of an afternoon snowstorm during the final year of Nixon’s cancerous second term. I obviously can’t recall a thing about that day, but I can picture the grassy hill in front of St John’s Hospital blanketed with snow and imagine stacks of black and white newspapers with headlines about Watergate in the gift shop.  Roger Moore was the new James Bond then, Hank Aaron was weeks away from breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record, and Peter Benchley’s Jaws was the week’s bestseller, but none of that mattered to me until years later. 

My first memory wasn’t about scandals or spies or baseball or killer sharks; it was about the refrigerator in my room in my parents’ tiny first apartment.looked like. I know from Mom that it was light blue, which is the appropriate color if you plan to put one in a baby boy’s bedroom, but other than that I know nothing. I obviously only have a slight recollection of that fridge, but I like to imagine it as one of those curved and chrome-trimmed ones. Probably from the ’50s or ’60s. Maybe it was lead-lined with an old school latch and dusty coils in the back of it, but again, I can only speculate.

Besides dinner leftovers and my milk bottles, the fridge most likely would have housed a six-pack of beer and a small bottle of white wine that Dad picked up after his workweek from the lumberyard was over. On a Saturday night, as I slept next to the purring monolith, my parents relaxed in the apartment’s main room as a Knicks’ game or Saturday Night Live played on the small tube television. I have muddled memories of Dad popping in to check on me while he grabbed a brown bottle of beer from the fridge’s door panel. The vault-like sentinel stood guard next to my crib and the soft hum of its motor instilled a sense of security within me.

A few years later when we moved to the house on Colonial Road, the same vibe of comfort was felt during my dad’s card games. On the occasional Tuesday night, with my mother at work and my sisters and I in our pajamas, my father would invite his brothers and his friends from the lumberyard to drink beer and play five-card stud.  I was allowed to greet each player and watch the opening hands. Like the Wise Men who visited Jesus in his manger, each man arrived with something: a six-pack of canned Budweiser, a bag of potato chips, a metal Band-Aid box filled with nickels and dimes.

Benny, the stout and jolly lumberyard foreman with his thick skinned paws and naked lady tattoo on his forearm, brought chocolate bars- the king-sized ones from the candy aisle at the supermarket- for my sisters and me. He was like a blue collar Santa. Uncle Guy brought his good luck charm- a Canadian nickel. Not knowing that it was not uncommon, I’d be allowed to hold it and study it, intrigued by the beaver. My uncle would place the nickel on the table next to his vodka on the rocks and a fresh pack of Pyramid lights just before the first hand was dealt. Uncle Buddy, with his Magnum mustache and light blue eyes, would bring his laugh- a hearty hoot that would be heard, although somewhat muffled, through my bedroom walls long after I brushed my teeth and was sent to bed.  

I heard the snap and fizz of beer cans, the slap of the cards being shuffled, and the jingling and jangling of growing pots as I lay in my bed, wide awake with the caffeine from Benny’s chocolate bars.