Thanks for sharing this with us, Rich!
“I remember when my parents divorced, my uncle Jerry’s father, who i affectionately called “Gpa” Jake, let us move into one of the apartments above the Caiafa Machine Shop for some time. My mother worked in the building as my brothers and I went to school. Our bus stop was right on the corner of the little hill leading to the main road.. Once my mother’ Geo Metro car got stuck in the snow going up the hill with us kids in it.. The band was practicing and we could hear them playing. My Ma went inside to ask for help and Jerry, Doyle & Chud came out and pushed the car up the hill with us inside . My brothers, cousins and friends Big Vinny and Mike Serino and I would run around playing tag and being mischievous, destroying Gma Janes, Jakes, Rocky’s offices.. Everybody was real patient with us kids ha, lots of love and good feelings all around. Whenever we’d knock over some bucket of parts hot off the press Gpa Jake would ask us something like ‘Ever see 10 grand before? Well its all over the floor.’ And he’d laugh. I would come home from school and fall asleep in the practice room and didn’t know at the time i was listening to songs that would eventually be on American Psycho. A few years ago there was a fire at the shop and the section of the building that had my old apartment was wiped out. It took at least two summers of me working to salvage what I could from the rubble and wreck. Personally going in with grime, soot, dirt, oil up to my neck to save what we could of parts, tools, Misfits memorabilia.. On the day the garbage truck was to come and take away the last bit of wreckage, i did one more look-see around the junk to make sure there wasn’t anything left and My eyes came to this fire singed, water damaged piece of paper.. Two years this had been trapped in the wreck and if i didn’t see it, it would have been gone forever. One Jerry’s original drawings of what would become his signature Devastator Bass Guitar. I put it in plastic and gave it to him on his bday last year. It now hangs on his wall. Good times and blessed with a loving family. Great Memories.
Rock on Fiends.“
