Eddie

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North Collins, New York is a beautiful town, and through the years I've endured my children's jokes about taking the lawnmower to school, or graduating with only 11 people in my senior class (there were 83).

The beauty of the town is in the people who made it up all those years ago.

It seemed more like a club than a town!

And dead-center of the town was Speedy's Bar.

Behind the bar was Eddie Or Foxy, and later Eddie Jr.

All three men are now gone after Eddie Sr. passed away this weekend.

"You better knock it off, Fuzzy, or I'll call your father!"

That was a danger of living in the small town.

You'd walk in the door and your mother would say:

"I already heard what you did."

And there were so many men who were friends with my Mom and Dad, and they all treated us wonderfully.

Eddie was certainly in that group.

In fact, he was a legend!

As we both got older we actually got closer. Eddie would tell me stories when we got together; but the stories were often about my Dad as a kid.

He loved North Collins, baseball and reading. We exchanged books. Eddie sent me newspaper clippings about writing and the Yankees.

My buddy Chris, who's Mom was married to Ed for a lot of years, broke the news to me that, in recent years, Ed became anti-Yankees as he started rooting for the Rays.

I'll let it pass!

I made a trip down to Florida with Chris and we had a chance to play a round of golf with Eddie. After the round, Ed took us into the garage, and as he did so many times in his bar in North Collins, he poured us a shot...

...from the bottle he had in the ceiling tiles.

I'm going to miss Knowing Eddie is out there in the world, but of course, he made his mark.

Legend.

RIP Buddy

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