Troy Stories

"I build greenhouses for Lowe’s. I travel with a crew from state to state. We take the roof off the garden center and put on a new one—usually takes about a week or two for each store. I’ve been in Rio Grande, New Jersey; Brooklyn, New York; North Carolina; South Carolina; Detroit, Michigan. I just moved here from Orlando in November. I love traveling, but it’s hard. I’m just sick of the road. We get paid for driving time, but 10 hours one way, 18 hours another? My crew just went to Chicago, and I was like, I’m gonna sit this trip out. I’ll catch you on the next one.

Here’s the thing: when you’re on the road you don’t really eat that good. When you’re traveling from place to place, and you’re working 10-12 hours a day, you’re doing mostly like fast foods. What I really like to do right now is cook. I started cooking when I was 17. Little places like Burger King or McDonald's, but I worked hard and made my way up to chef. Most of the places I’ve worked have their own recipes, but I made up a few dishes of my own. Soul food—collard greens, stuffings, things like that. I was tellin’ my crew. I said, man, you know what? I don’t see no soul food restaurants around here in Troy. Nowhere. I see all different other type restaurants, coffee shops, bagel shops, bakeries… but no soul food. The closest you can get to that is this Jamaican restaurant down by the 4th Street Market. I need to find somebody to invest in a good soul food restaurant. Small building, set it up like a mom-and-pop kitchen.

I can’t complain though. Life is pretty good. I just thank God for every day. Once I see the sun, I’m like, okay, I’ve got a chance to do something different than I did yesterday. I’ll make things better than they were yesterday."

"I’m married to Jesus Christ. It says in the Bible that you can be married to Jesus. I thought you had to be a nun, but I started going to the Episcopal church and I learned that you don’t have to be a nun to be married to Jesus. You can take the bread and wine without going through a ceremony. I didn’t really grow up religious, but I’ve gotten a lot more religious in the last two or three years. Not sure why... it just happened.

My boyfriend belonged to the Episcopal church. I used to go with him sometimes, but for whatever reason I just stopped going. Then one day, I said to myself, 'I’m going to make my bed for God.' I don’t normally make my bed, but I decided I’d start making it for God. I knew this lady who went to this other church that was closer to my home, so I started going there with her. And then my boyfriend passed away. He owed $200 on his cable bill, so I went to the Episcopal church and asked them for the money, and they gave it to me. So I said to myself, well, I might as well start going there. That’s not the real reason I go there, though. I really started going there because I had just moved to new apartments and that church was closer. But it got me going to Bible study on Saturday and Sunday, and I’m learning a lot there."

"My story right now has two parts: my job and the people in my life.

I have four beautiful children, three grandkids, and my dad I take care of… he’s 86. I take care of him, and get to have dinner with him every night. I’m so lucky. I’m 60 years old, and I love what I do.

I was the city engineer here in Troy for 10 years. Born and raised here, and now I’m back in my engineering business of 28 years. As city engineer, I was responsible for 26 bridges, 10 dams, 7,760 feet of sea wall along the Hudson, 150 miles of road, drainage structures, and buildings here in the city. I love to study the behavior of structures. I love the science of it. It’s the combination of math, science, and people. I feel like I’ve got a little niche that not many people have. It becomes a craft, a trade. I get into it. I’m a mechanic. I design stuff in concrete, steel, and wood. I make things that are useful for people… and they appreciate it. I’m just so lucky."

"As you get older, the prospect of death becomes more real, especially when you’re in your seventies. Your whole body changes. Your attitude changes. Sometimes, your attitude changes for the better. You become more mellow and you’re more appreciative of everything, especially the little things that at one time might not have mattered. And you certainly don’t get excited about things that go wrong anymore. Absolutely not. They don’t shake you quite as much.

I’m glad just to be alive. To be breathing. To know that I'm loved by my friends and my family. To be loved by God... I know he’s with me, seeing me every step of the way."

"Six weeks after Katrina, I was living in Manhattan, in the West Village. I was late for a party, but I had to stop at an ATM. I’m rushing, rushing, rushing. I’m about to leave when I hear this whining. I look down and there was this box at my feet. I was such a New Yorker, so focused on what I needed to do that I hadn’t even seen it. There’s this tiny puppy in the box, sitting right at the edge, looking up at me with these incredible shocking blue eyes. And he’s crying. His five sisters were all cuddled up together, sleeping, and he’s the only one awake, looking straight at me and crying.

I asked the woman there about him. She tells me this story about how she and her girlfriend had been down in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and they thought they’d wait out the storm; but it got really bad, so they finally decide to leave. As they’re driving, they see this dog on the side of the road. She’s shaking, about to give birth. So they put her in the car, and she gives birth to this litter in the back seat.

I’d never had a pet before. I didn’t know how amazing it would be; but when I heard that story, I knew I had to have him. I took him with me to the party. Carried him on my shoulder. Everyone was fawning over him. And, of course... he peed all down my shirt. At that point, I just knew it was meant to be. Buddy was meant to be my dog.

I was doing a photo shoot for a fashion catalog at the time. I didn’t know what to do with him, so I brought him with me. All the girl models and the client freaked out when they saw him... so he got the cover and 5 pages inside. So not only is he a Katrina rescue, he’s a supermodel. And he’s more famous than me. I was neighbors with Amy Sedaris. Buddy and her bunny Dusty used to sit in the hallway together. One time I heard a commotion in the hallway, so I ran out and… it's Matthew Broderick with Sarah Jessica and the new baby. Sarah had freaked out when she saw Buddy, and Matthew was giving her grief about it because Buddy was just a little puppy at the time.

He’s 12 years old now, and he's definitely the greatest joy in my life right now."

"God saved my boyfriend.

He and I have been together for a year now. I met him online, and he's so different from me. He's from Long Island, and I was born and raised in Troy. The first time I met him, I was nervous about it. I mean, you’re getting to meet someone you haven’t met before. But I got to know about his life, his family, his personality. It was all very romantic.

Last year, he got shot in both of his legs with a shotgun, but God saved his life. He had to get seven surgeries. From his hips to his knees, he has no femur bone, just rods and screws. Everything’s getting better though. He won’t be able to use his right foot any more because the bullet tore up the nerves. With therapy, though, now he’s walking. It was a lot of stress, but we’re getting through it."

“I’m having a struggle accepting what happened the other day: we have a new President. I had a hard time walking out the door this morning… it’s terrifying. I’m worried about people losing their civil liberties. I’m worried about people losing their health care and dying. I’m worried about the programs I work with getting terminated. I feel really overwhelmed about it. The hatred that’s being set loose. People feel like they can say anything they want. It seems pretty awful.

I just have to keep reminding myself: we have to stay calm. We still all have each other, and there’s a lot of us. In response, people are going to be so much more active now, speaking up.

Last night, I was talking to my mom and she said, 'I’m praying that God will open his heart and mind.' I wish I had that kind of faith, but I don’t. I feel much worse than with Bush or Nixon. I'm old enough that I remember when Nixon was elected.

I was 19 when Woodstock happened, and I remember the whole Kent State ordeal, when everybody realized… that’s it, there’s no idealism any more. And all that has been happening now, it’s bringing back all the same feelings to me again. The Kent State shooting site was just declared a national historic landmark, and when I read that and saw the pictures of the dead kids again, it all came back to me how that felt when it happened. Of course, all that historical turmoil made a lot of people step back or retreat, and it made some people more violent; but it also made some people take action in their own lives or in their own communities that brought about some positive social change. So maybe that's something.”

"My mom was a single mom of three. I saw the struggles that she went through. She worked 80 hours a week, but we still always went without. I never understood that. Eventually, I started working on my own, just like my mom, working all these minimum wage retail jobs that were just keeping me stuck in place.

Then I became a mom at 19 and again at 23. There's this mother instinct that says, do more... be more. But there’s this other instinct we all have, a drive that says I’m not going to be like my parents. My mom was in an abusive relationship with my father. And when I got older I found myself dealing with similar struggles, but that drive to break free from that cycle kept me going.

I feel like I’m still repeating some of those things, like small mistakes you make just being a young mother. But I’m a different animal. I’m strong like my mother. I’m kind like my mother. But I’ve chosen a path of self-education. Even though I'm in a tough situation and I don’t live in the nicest neighborhood, I can go to school. I can keep that educational momentum going. She never did any of that. She was always chasing guys. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be someone’s toy, someone’s plaything. People often mistake kindness for weakness. I might look cute and pretty, but I’m a pit bull underneath. I’ll choke you with the same hand I fed you with if I have to. As kind as I am, I won’t tolerate injustice. I hate it.

That’s partly why I started Butterfly Wings. It’s a non-profit that provides necessities other than food—diapers, toilet paper, toiletries, feminine products, etc—to people in need. I have family I can call, but a lot of people don’t. A lot of teenage moms get kicked out of their house and have nothing. One in particular I’m thinking of… she's working her butt off. She’s got a 1 year old. Every day she gets on the bus to take her baby to Head Start so he can have his education. I’m doing this for her. I’m doing this for him. Helping fill a need, give some motivation, and provide some economic mobility. That’s what Butterfly Wings is all about."

"Being outside in the sunshine, even when it’s snowy... I don’t know, I just really love it. The weather makes me happy. I’m from Hawaii, so I had never really gotten to experience winter until I came here. This is my second year, but last year wasn’t much of a winter. So being here, getting outside in all this snow—that’s what gets me up and going.

Since I was really young, I’ve been interested in astronomy and space. I’m studying applied physics at RPI with a concentration in space science. I also do research in California during the summer at one of the UC schools there, which a great experience. Right now, I’m taking a lot of core curriculum because I’m a sophomore; but I got to take an astrophysics class this semester and loved it. I want to build telescopes and satellites and instrumentation for space ships, things like that. That’s the side of it that I really like."

"I was a murderer.

I ain’t gonna lie. What I did… it had to be done. Except that when you share a great story or make a great contribution to life, you get to say, “Hey, I did this.” But the thing I knew I had to do? I was a murderer for five years. I didn’t achieve nothing. My story is no story.

I served in the military for 5 years. I thought I was gonna die in Afghanistan, but I didn't. I don’t regret it. I volunteered. I made that decision. I knew what I was getting in to. And I’m luckier than a lot of guys. I got shot in the lung and I've got the scar to prove it. But I’ve still got two legs, two hands… I'm very lucky. But I also just see it how it was. I had to witness things that I didn’t think were very logical, y'know? The mathematics of it.

The people over there… they were just simple people. They didn’t care about all the stuff we care about. This is what gets me mad. People here don’t understand… we’d go blow up their mud houses and put in plumbing. They don’t want plumbing. They just want to be them. Like… you wouldn’t blow up a house here in South Troy and replace it with a mansion. Their ways of life are so much different. They’ve had nothing all their life, so for them to suddenly get all this infrastructure… it’s a shock. You’re shocking them almost like the Europeans shocked the Indians with guns. You know what I mean?

One time, I was almost married off to a woman over there. I accidentally threw a grenade into this guy’s fence and killed all his goats. I brought him a $20 because I felt bad, and he tried giving me his daughter because it was so much money to them.

It’s just a different world. It’s humbling. And you’ve got the idiots over there just like you’ve got idiots over here. Take ISIS for example. They’re just gangs with a government. We’ve got gang killings here… and they're atrocious, but the US government cracks down on them. ISIS is the same concept, only they’ve got a government. And you can’t fight a gang because you take one person out and tomorrow two or three more might take their place.

Sometimes it’s just better left as it is. You don’t need to poke. You don’t need to prod. Sorry… I just see things differently than most."

"My greatest sense of joy in life right now comes from knowing that my kids are good, and healthy, and in a good place in their own lives. My wife and I did a good job of raising them and we look forward to watching them grow. One's a freshman in college, one is a 26 year-old living and working in New York City, the other is 24 and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They’re both employed and my daughter is going to school to be a teacher, so everybody is in a good place. That means the world to me."

"I'm getting married soon… this coming summer. I’ve already got my gown and everything. Robert and I met over the Internet, and we've known each other for ten years now. He lives in New York City, so we go back and forth visiting each other. We see each other every other weekend if we can.

The first time we met in person was a little weird. He was born and raised down in New York City, but I didn't know much about the city, so he made dinner reservations. I was so shaky when I first saw him. We had been talking 3 months. I wanted to get to know him a bit more before I met him in person. But boy, I didn’t think he’d be that good looking! His pictures didn’t do him any justice, not at all.

And the crazy thing is that he’s much younger than me… by 20 years. Age is a number, right?"

“For a while, I was full-time in the nightclub scene in Boston. But I got the bug and wanted to own my own place. I grew up in Colonie, so I moved back here to see what I could get going. This was ’73. I met another guy who wanted to do the same thing, so we opened up a place in Guilderland called The Mad Hatter.

One night, this guy Billy came in, had a few beers, and on his way out he realized he didn’t have any money on him. So he called me over and said, ‘This baseball hat is worth 5 beers.’ I was like, ‘That piece of shit’s not worth one!’ We settled on two beers. He got his free beers, and I got out my ladder and nailed his hat to the ceiling. Guys started coming in and pointing out their hats out to their friends. We got a little following like that. Two years into that venture, I found my partner doing some unscrupulous things, so I told him to buy me out and he did. Well, the very last night in the place, in walks Billy with this girl—she’s got every curve you could possibly imagine. But she’s way too hot for Billy to hold on to.

Fast forward a few months. I sell the business, party for a few months, travel to Hawaii for a few weeks, and when I get back, I take a sales job. The end of that very first week on the job, I’m driving from work thinking, it’s Friday... what am I going to do this weekend? I’m going to happy hour. I’ve never been to happy hour! I’ve worked happy hour for the last six years, but I’ve never just gone to happy hour! And who do I meet as soon as I walk in the door? Miss Shapely… she’s now my wife!”

"I was walking through Troy one day and someone was handing out fliers about gnosis. It’s a practice through prayer, meditation, and self-reflection of raising your consciousness and connecting with your inner light, your inner being. There were classes in Troy at the time, and I knew someone who was going to them, so I started going and just never stopped. The classes taught me how to meditate and how to look at my spirituality through many different avenues of energy and chakra. You get in touch with your higher self. You connect with your higher self. But it’s really about how to become aware of your life, who you are, what’s going on, where you want to be and accepting and dealing with life in general.

I’ve been on a spiritual path for 30 years… I looked at everything. All the other spiritual paths kind of touch gnosis peripherally, but it wasn’t until I found out about and began practicing gnosis that I realized that was the bullseye. Everything else was a part of it, but gnosis was at the center of it all."

I love being a mother… most of the time. I’ve got three kids, but before they wake up in the morning, it feels like they’re already fighting. They fight all day long. Then they’re bugging me in the shower. It can be tiring, but I do love it. I think the biggest struggle I face is mostly just financial—trying to provide not just for what my kids need, but also what they want.

I lost the first job I ever had. My oldest son—his mother didn’t tell me she was pregnant with him. For three months, she didn’t tell me she had him. When I finally found out, I couldn’t focus on my work. It was a good job—an easy job, but not knowing for so long and missing him and just finding out now, dealing with all this stuff. It was all just so heavy on my mind.

I don’t know how other people would react, but music, to me… I can feel how the artists feel when they’re singing. I don’t know how it works or why it works, but that’s what happened. That whole time, there was this one song that always got to me when I’d listen to it. Always. I’d just end up breaking down. It’s a song not many people know about… Like Father Like Son by The Game. It killed me whenever I heard it.

My kids are really what keep me going. I get up and take them to school in the morning, and it makes me feel good. It feels good that they’re in school because I was never able to go to college. If they keep following that path, they can get to college. That’s what I’m hoping for.

I’ve been singing all my life. I used to be the music director at a local Church of Christ. They didn’t have any instruments, so we sang acapella. In fact, that’s how I got into barbershop and ultimately became Uncle Sam. A guy I worked with was in a Schenectady barbershop quartet, and he got after me to join this new gospel group that had just started. This was the late 80’s, I think. I got in with that group, and eventually we joined with several other people and formed the Uncle Sam Chorus, which I'm now directing.

One time, I was performing on Guam. While I was there, I met some people who wanted me to come over to Saipan to do a television show. So I flew over there. The producer met me in the morning, and he took me to three schools in one day: an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. All of that before I had to do the television show that night.

The elementary kids… they were astonished. They didn’t know what to make of me. They didn’t help me sing or anything, they just kind of stared at me. Then I went to the middle school in the afternoon. It was on the beach. I had a flip-chart I was using to teach, but it was so windy that I couldn’t use it. I had to just wing it. And, of course, I was the only one dumb enough to stand in the hot sun all dressed up while the kids sat in the shade. Then I went to the high school, and the kids there… they were typical high schoolers. They didn’t do anything. They just sat there and looked at me like I was from another planet.

I went from there to the television show, and it went late. I was going to change afterward before getting on the plane, but the emcee told me there's no time. We have to catch that plane. If we don’t, we’re stuck here overnight because it’s the last plane leaving.

So here I am in costume, and I board the aircraft with everyone staring at me. Then, of course, I had to walk through the whole Guam airport in costume. Everyone was like, “Oh! Hi Uncle Sam! Hi Uncle Sam!” That was probably one of the strangest days I've had in all my years doing this.

This is my 25th year playing Uncle Sam. My wife was very supportive of me. My kids have been very supportive of me. I thoroughly enjoy it. Of course, I try to teach. I have a presentation about American history; but honestly it’s been more about having fun and meeting people. It’s just been such a blast.

I was a very good cricket player back in Pakistan. People from other towns would call me to play for them.

Once, I played in a very big cricket tournament. I didn’t sleep at all the night before it because I was very excited. It was a big game for me. The day of the final match, I was the bowler. They had a very good, international batsman who came up to bat. The score was close and they needed a run to win. There were probably 700 people, all of them looking at me. I was very nervous.

My captain came over to me and said, “I trust in you. You can do this.” I had walked two that day, and before that, two or three bowlers had hit me well. “Don’t worry about all that. I know you can bowl him out.” So I start to think, “I can do this. I don’t want to miss my chance.”

I bowl the first bowl... and he misses. The next 3 bowls, I bowl with my full power and he misses all of them. Then, I bowl toward his foot, and he can’t hit it. Only one bowl remaining. It was a very confusing time! I take the ball… everybody is shouting at me, “Come on! Come on!” I take the ball, wind it up, throw it and… got him clean out! I shouted! Everyone ran down to the field and lifted me up on their shoulders.

I will never forget that moment.

Favorite things in life? Oh, that's easy: playing chess and watching Lebron.

Couple of years ago I moved to Vegas for three weeks. But if you don’t have money, it’s worthless. If you’re not going out and gambling, there’s nothing to do. Nobody’s outside because it’s too hot. You never meet your neighbors. So I ended up coming back to Troy.

I don’t really do anything exciting. I’m either home, or I go to a bar and drink. I take life as it comes. I don’t struggle. I go with the flow. That’s my life philosophy. It works. Just doing what I know. This is what I do. Can’t say it always comes out right, but I do believe that it doesn’t matter what you accomplish in life. We all end up dead.

Queen's got a song—can’t think of the title right now—but there’s a line in there, “Rich or poor or famous, when we’re through it’s all the same.” That’s pretty much how I view life. I don’t take it seriously. I don’t worry about shit. What good is that? To me, worry is the biggest waste. What good are you going to do worrying about something? Like if you want money to pay your rent, unless you can do something about it, worrying doesn’t help you one bit.