mom, elbows, artillery, and other things that go bump in the night

This is a typical morning.
I walk in to check on mom and she is sleeping on the floor.
I had placed a picture of it on this blog but she has since made me remove it. She doesn't want any incriminating evidence posted.
It makes me want to cry. I mean really- the bed cost almost $2,000 and it is rarely used!
Chances are she fell out of bed from spasms and then slept on the floor for the rest of the night.
Can you blame me for wanting her to live down the street?
To her it is just a typical morning and she tries to be positive; she might say something like she prefers to sleep on the floor.
Yeesh.

Megan is probably having the best sleep of her life right now. I have this habit of elbowing her in the head during the night. We had to get the largest bed possible so we could have more distance between her head and my elbow. But I can't seem to help it. I scoot over in the middle of the night so I be close to her and then BLAMO. Maybe it's a Disanza thing that we have problems in our sleep. Mom falls out of bed and sleeps on the floor. Dad wouldn't sleep unless a movie was on, and I elbow my wife like she's a punching bag. What is wrong with us???? I need to either get nerf elbow pads or some wrestling head gear for Megan.

Dad was very funny to watch at night. He always wanted you to watch a movie with him. It would be one of his favorite movies, like Dirty Dancing, or The Cutting Edge, or some western flick. And he would sit there on the couch for the first 5 minutes and then his eyes would close, and then his head would start to fade backwards, and then SMACK! His head would hit the wall behind him, which would wake him up, which would enable him to watch the movie for another 5 minutes before the whole process would repeat. It was a vicious cycle- really. And there were these grease spots on the wall from where his bald head would hit it. They never did repaint those spots in Jersey before they moved. I wonder if they are still there today. Dad could sleep anywhere. He was a tanker.

If he could can sleep on the back of a Main Battle Tank on a tank range with main guns firing less than 100 yards away, flares shooting up every 5 minutes, and the 50 cal whizzing down range like a red laser then you can understand how he could sleep anywhere...and why he was half deaf. I remember one day he snuck me and Sergeant Rambolo's son onto the range at Fort Indian Town Gap. What a memory. I can never forget it. Yeah- some kids go to Great Adventure, some kids go to Disneyland, my Dad took me to a tank range. I was probably 9 or 10 at the time and Dad had me completely dressed in camouflage just like him- but I wouldn't know why until later. Dad was my hero. He was Company Commander at the time and his company had all their tanks on the range and his men had to practice and qualify. Later in life Dad would run the whole battalion and the range but that’s another story.... The tanks I saw were before the Abrams came out. They were the older M60 model tanks with the big luggage rack on top. But the guns were still powerful and still loud. The bolt on the main gun tube, inside the tank, was bigger than I was. It looked just like the one of my dad's hunting rifle, only a heck of a lot bigger and a heck of a lot louder. The tank commander would yell commands like "gunner target!" and the other fuy would yell something back and Dad wuold yell "fire!" and then round would go off and the end of the main gun tube would explode with a fiery blast like in the movies and the force of the round was so fierce that it would literally cause the tank to jump backwards by one track tread. I remember studying it because I was fascinated by it. A little while later that tank would be many feet behind the line from where it started. But what was even more fun was the 50 cal on the top of the tank. The gunner would be perched on top of the tank, just his helmeted head and biceps exposed and he would hold the gun with 2 hands, there was a grip on each side of the gun and one grip had a trigger. There was an endless string of thick bullets that had these clips on them that connected them together. And every 5th bullet in the chain had a red tip on it. Dad explained that as these red-tipped bullets went down range that their red tips glowed from the heat. Since the gun fired so fast it looked like a constant red laser so the gunner knew exactly where he was shooting. The gun fired so fast that the clips from the bullets going into the chamber would fly off and it seemed like a torrential rainstorm of clips flying off the top of the tank. And amid it all there would be these parachute flares that someone kept shooting up in the sky. A parachute flare is a glowing piece of magnesium that is shot up into the sky and it burns so hot and bright that it light up the whole range. As it descends from the sky it has a rip-stop nylon parachute bove it so it slows the descent and allows for maximum time aloft to provide light for as long as possible. You could probably read a newspaper under it. A year later our neighbor had invited us to his 4th of July party and was bragging about his huge stockpile of fireworks. He was really laying it on thick. Finally Dad went into the house and emerged with the silver tube. I knew exactly what he was doing. And with a pop of his first he sent a parachute flare over South Bound Brook. It didn’t take long for the neighbor to drop his cigarette...or for the sirens to start blaring either! In hindsight, it probably wasn't that smart to send a burning piece of magnesium over a heavily populated town but hey- I just like to think Dad was being patriotic! Of course, if anyone in town wanted to wash their car, rad the paper, or do anything else for 5 minutes, they sure didn't need a flashlight! And a few years after that Dad let off an artillery simulator in the Bradshaws front lawn on New Years Eve. Lets just say your banging pots and pans can't hold a candle to an artillery simulator. And it was probably helpful for Ralph Bradshaw, you know, in case if he needed a big hole in his front yard and was too tired to dig one himself. I could go on and on about my father's little "treats" for us. I mean- try playing capture the flag in the boy scouts when Dad pops red smoke in the middle of the field. Sure, it was a heck of a lot of fun for us; I'm sure the people trying to drive down the road nearby who couldn't see more than 3 feet in front of them through this red fog weren't too happy but it sure was fun for us!

Oh the memories...... I sure miss him. He was slightly irreverent, slightly off kilter, you never knew what he was going to do next but you knew it was going to be fun!


Then I remember some high ranking official was coming by in his jeep and Dad yelled at me to head into the trees! I realized why he had me wear camoflauge. Thinking back, I am pretty sure 9 or 10 year olds were not allowed on military tank ranges. Maybe it was something about liability? But really, what was it all that dangerous?