Paulie’s glove
The following is the story of a single lost, lonely black glove, as told by Brett Traylor. This, and the accounts of many others are currently on exhibit at New South Collective in Knoxville, TN. Curator Lisa Megan Forb, a former senior designer at Thinkso and currently an art director at the University of Tennessee, maintains a blog dedicated to these forgotten accessories. She invited Brett to describe the photo pictured above.
This isn’t a story about a glove.
It’s a story of living, loving and dying.
Paulie “Thumbs” Marzullo was my favorite uncle. Not because he made the best gravy and meatballs in the family, or because he used to take me dumpster diving in Staten Island on the weekends, but because despite all odds, Paulie was a survivor. He was color blind. He had a terrible sense of fashion. And he had lost both thumbs in a tragic childhood shuffleboard accident. He never allowed any of these things to keep him from living life to its fullest. That is, until Christmas Eve of ’87.
Uncle Paulie was a serious chain smoker. He had developed the habit during what would become a rather distinguished career as a Coney Island ticket-taker for the “Amazin’ Monkey Boy.” He was known up and down the boardwalk for his friendly banter and was recognized 3 different times as “freak-of-the-year” by the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce for his work with Amazin’. But after his shift on Christmas Eve of that fateful year, it all came to an end. Paulie was a notorious cheapskate, and having waited until the last possible minute to buy the last, sad, Christmas tree outside Jerry’s Bodega on Ocean Ave, he remembered something. He had left a brand new pack of Newports on top of Amazin’s cage, back on the boardwalk. With tree in hand he headed back to the “office” as he used to call it. He squeezed through the locked turnstile and reached through the broken fence — just barely able to reach his prize atop the rusty metal cage.
Amazin’ was asleep. A light snow began to fall and the sound of slightly drunken carolers could be heard not far off. Uncle Paulie opened the pack and lit up what would be his last cigarette. He took a long, slow drag — holding the cigarette between two fingers of his right hand. As his nicotine levels rose, he realized that all of the run-around had delayed him quite a bit. My grandmother’s house would be full of family and the smell of roasted goose when he got back and she would throw a fit if the tree wasn’t in place and decorated by dinner time. He wrapped his free arm around the dead, dry Douglas Fir and started off. To this day I don’t know if it was the snow, the brittle pine branches or the smoke in his eyes that did it, but he took one step off the curb, straight onto one of Amazin’s discarded banana peels.
The tree and cigarette went flying. Uncle Paulie hit his head square on the curb and never got up again. He died just after midnight on Christmas Day. The police officer who found him told my grandparents that he looked like he had laid down to do snow angels. We like to think that’s exactly what happened. Paulie “Thumbs” Marzullo was 48 years old. He was the best eight-fingered, trash-digging, color blind, polyester-wearing, chain-smoking, monkey-handling Italian uncle I ever had.