(Editor’s Note: The following is an outtake from the book IF THESE LIPS COULD TALK by Frank Pace & Billy O’Connor. It never made it into the book. Nevertheless, we thought you might like to read it. To purchase the book, go to: https://amickamookandamic.com/product/if-these-lips-could-talk/
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My father used say “Frankie boy, if bullshit was music, you would be the whole brass band.”
I learned how to “spin” at a very young age. I was working a paper route at 12-years-old. The daily newspaper cost 40 cents a week. Every one of my customers in North White Plains, NY were frugal to say the least, so on collection day I knew my best bet for a tip was to give change of 50 cents with two nickels rather than a dime.
I was also schlepping golf bags at 13, hitchhiking ten miles to get to the now defunct Ridgeway Country Club in White Plains. We would be paid $12 a loop for two bags. My mom would take $10 of it to save for my college education. She was obviously an optimist. Some days, I would make two loops and go 36 holes.
Our caddie shack had characters of every race, creed, and color. Clarence, a 70-year-old deaf mute, was one and another a “doctor” who had left the medical profession to haul golf bags. “Doc’s” wife reportedly died on the operating table, so he was bitter and, like Clarence, never talked. One of the teenagers of our shack grew up to be a mafia kingpin. You had to think fast to survive in the caddy shack, so we all learned to go along to get along.
I graduated from Valhalla High School number 86 in a class of 155. Comfortably in the middle third of my class is how I spun it. Pioneer and black-baseball player, Jackie Robinson, gave our commencement speech.
Due to a creative writing course in high school that changed my life, twenty years later, it would be me, number 86, giving that commencement speech. No longer comfortable in the middle, it seemed out front suited me just fine.
After several college rejections, using the money my mother had saved for me, I went to Jacksonville University. Attending that school was the best break I ever had. I played four years of Division 1 college soccer and two years of college baseball. Compared to the others on our team, I stunk at baseball but excelled at soccer.
I think I made the baseball team as favor to my soccer coach. Baseball, he thought, could keep me occupied and out of trouble. He was partially right.
I threw batting practice every day but pitched only one regular season game in two years. We were up 13-0 and the coach brought me in to relieve in the ninth. I gave up four runs before getting out of the inning. I still can hear our coach yelling, “Keep it up, Pace. You’ll send them home happy yet.”
I was no smarter in college than I was in high school but progressed a bit by writing for the school newspaper. It was there, in college, that I learned anyone can do anything given an opportunity and the right set of circumstances.
Our Jacksonville basketball team, led by the great Artis Gilmore, shocked the basketball world in 1970 by beating Kentucky, the number 1 team in the nation, and advancing to the NCAA basketball finals. They lost to UCLA, but to this day, Jacksonville is the smallest school to ever play in the NCAA finals. After that season, I swore I’d make the finals in everything I ever did for the rest of my life. (The documentary JACKSONVILLE WHO? is available on You Tube)
Each summer I would have to earn the next years’ tuition, so I would return home to work at Gold Service Movers. There I met a kinder, gentler brand of renegade, alcoholics really, professional moving men who would again influence my life in how they treated people. They fought amongst themselves, but always had a nice word for the customer. They were the kindest, most decent of people, and man were they funny.
I graduated from Jacksonville and moved west to continue my odyssey. I didn’t really follow any plan, I just walked through any door that seemed to open. I continued to write and listen to any singular voice that sang to me.
I have been very lucky.
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