1963 Mafia and Formula I

A great deal of my childhood (and adulthood for that matter) was spent in a dentist's chair.

When we lived in Short Hills, NJ, My mother's friend Margot Cody recommended a dentist to my parents.  His name was Ted and his wife was British.  He lived in Jersey City, NJ, in a brownstone they were renovating.  They were able to buy it very cheaply with a restoration grant.  Ted was a really interesting guy.  He had a Formula 1 car that he wasn't street legal.  He kept it in a garage behind the brownstone and would start it up and sit in it.  

Formula I

One day he told me that he had another patient about my age, who told him all kinds of stories about her family.  He said just the other day she had told him about her grandparents' back yard, that it was full of crazy statues.  I never thought much of it, until a few years later, when a big shot in La Cosa Nostra (the Mafia) was arrested.  On the news, they showed him leaving his house and as an interesting tidbit showed his back yard.  It was full of statues.  

I very often arrived at Ted's drunk.  My teeth were in pretty bad shape and I had toothaches a lot.  My dad would give me the little bottles of Scotch he took off the airplanes every time he flew and I would take a slug of Scotch and hold it in my cheek to numb the tooth.  Usually I ended up swallowing it, especially if we were in the car on the way to Jersey City.  Ted thought it was hysterical (I was only 14).

The worst part of going to Ted was that my mother and I always stopped on the way home to have lunch.  Well, she had lunch.  I couldn't eat because my mouth was numb (and I had a hangover).  That always seemed particularly cruel.