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enjoy this Kenneth DiMaggio writing in the free cc&d Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead

The Day Frank Sinatra Soothed The Savage Beasts.

Kenneth DiMaggio

    Father Paul was our priest, but Sebby was our bartender. When you’re 18, on academic probation at the local community college, and just can’t get laid, (no matter how hard you pray) then you need a bartender.
    Fortunately for us, it was 1976. Everybody had an awful hairstyle (which we would not discover until much later). But it was legal to drink at 18 in a burned out engine block of a town in Connecticut.
    At 18, we still went to St. Ann’s...well, Christmas, Easter...but on slow Sunday afternoons, we went to The Roma Bar & Restaurant, permitted by Sebby Carpino, who took a shine to my two friends and me.
    “You know those monkeys? See no evil, hear no evil? Well, for Vito, Johnny, and Nick, it’s common sense that you don’t got.”
    Here we go; every time we sat at the mahogany counter, ordered Heineken, and got served Schaffer, Sebby had to give us the spiel.
    “Eighteen, and you get arrested for shooting out street lights! You can’t join the police force and get paid for shooting guns?”
    Vito Antonucci just like weapons. Sling shots, brass knuckles, bowie knives, nunchucks...not that he ever used them on any living thing.
    “I’m a collector,” Vito shyly said. “Besides, I get faints at the sight of blood!”
    “Hey Sebby, when ya gonna serve Heineken? This is the modern age. People drink foreign beers. For that matter, guys don’t wear pants with suspenders and ties about as short and fat as a slice a pizza!”
    Sebby shot a sidelong glance to Johnny. “A man with a future! Johnny Benedetti! Instead of apprenticing with his Uncle in the plumbing business, his life’s going into the toilet.”
    “Just like you never heard a Heineken, you never heard a word like entrepreneur!” Johnny said.
    “Yeah. Entrepreneur. Selling firecrackers to 12-year olds,” Sebby shrugged. “And here we have the scholar.”
    Which must be me, Nick DiFazio.
    “Sebby, the Dean personally spoke with me the other day,” I boasted.
    “Yeah, to personally tell him he was on probation!” Johnny said.
    “Like I was saying,” Sebby said, “see no intelligence, speak no intelligence...but sooner or later guys...”
    “Sebby, spare us the stuff that Father Paul used to tell us. We’ll drink the Schaffer.”
    “You’ll drink nothing until you put a quarter in the jukebox.” Sebby wiped the counter before he smacked a quarter down on the bar and slid it over to me.
    “You’re not going to serve us...until we play you a song?” I said.
    “You’re catching on,” Sebby said.
    “Oh-kayyy...” I said. “Any particular request?”
    “Led Zeppelin!” Vito snickered.
    “Naw, not for a guy who never heard a Heineken! Some Country and Western shit!” Johnny said.
    But when I got to the jukebox I saw that all the songs had been changed to Frank Sinatra.
    “There must be at least thirty of his songs in here. And all of them from Sinatra.”
    “Enough to teach you guys a little class, instead of always acting like a bunch of clowns.”
    “Hey bartender! I read books; not Mickey Spillane, but books! Nietzsche, Camus, Sart—“ I started to say.
    “I bet you ain’t even danced with a girl!” Sebby said. “None of you! But maybe you will...once you learn about those things...and the best person to learn those things from...well, you going to play a song kid? Or are you still going to stay a kid?”
    This was crazy. Some old singer was going to get me laid; well, teach me to dance, maybe just sing some hokey song. And the brass intro to “Come Fly With Me” was hokey enough for me, Vito, and Johnny to laugh. But after a few seconds...when Frank started singing about drinking exotic booze in some bar in Bombay or...wherever it was, it wasn’t The Roma Bar & Restaurant in New Britain, Connecticut. And Frank wasn’t drinking by himself, but with some woman whom he was holding—excuse me, gliding with. Best of all, was the ending, where Frank says as if he is winking: “And don’t tell your Mama.”
    After about thirty seconds, it was clear that we weren’t going to say anything. Sebby finally asked; like a first time teacher, who all along was afraid of his students despite the tough act he used to teach his lesson: “Well...?”
    “You got another quarter, Sebby?” Johnny asked.
    And for the rest of that summer, it would be a lot of quarters; it would be songs like “That’s Life,” “Luck Be A Lady,” “A Summer Wind”. Eventually we began to request more selections from Sebby, and he would try to oblige; not being able to get all of Frank’s music into that box. Didn’t matter, what he couldn’t get, we got on our own, first in LP, then 8-track, then cassette, and just when I thought CD was the last form you could hear the Chairman of the Board on, there’s—why mention it. That technology will be old by the time you finish reading this story. But Frank Sinatra’s music? When I get a chance, I play some for my freshman college students today, some of whom groan, smirk, or snicker the same way me and two other friends once did before our bartender. Because when you’re 18, on academic probation at the local community college, and just can’t get laid, (no matter how hard you pray) then you need a man like Sebby Carpino.
    And music from Frank Sinatra,

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