“We had a couple of gal—girlfriends from Miami that were up there as well. And we pal-ed around with them. They stayed at a different place than we did—at the Spanner Motel. This was everybody’s second summer up there, but it was my first. So, everything was kind of new and exciting to me, and so forth. I mean, I’ll never forget the first night I’m up there and we’re staying in the staff quarters of the Stevensville Hotel, which is basically a rundown basement with a couple of bunk beds and a couple of pee-stained mattresses. And, you know, four o’clock in the morning some wino—a Bimmy—starts to crawl in through the window, and I’m like ‘Oh my God! What’s going to happen here?’ And one of my friends, Gary Franks, just kind of kicked the guy in the head out the window and goes, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a Bimmy! Go back to sleep.’ ”
Following a short snicker, Boogie ended with, “So that was part of my indoctrination to ‘The Mountains.’ ”
≈ Tell me about Gary Franks ≈
“Gary Franks is a madman. Was. And still is. And, you know, he was a big womanizer. Good-looking guy, tall, lean and he hooked up with the wife of a ‘made’ man. Of a—of a Mafioso guy up there. And—I don’t know—fell in love! Here she was, an older woman. You know this is something that just came out, I just remembered out of the blue and I just never thought that he would end up alive after all this, because the guy was gunnin’ for him after they found out. But yeah, he had the Summer of Love. But Gary always was a lady’s man, always did well with the ladies and, you know, he was in the clothing business throughout that time, and remains so to this day. But Gary and I are not that close, but I still see him occasionally when we have our get-togethers, our 60th birthdays and this and that. And we all get together and reminisce.”
≈ Who were the girlfriends you mentioned? ≈
“Specifically, that was Sylvia Green who was Kenneth and my age—twenty—, 21—and Janice (Jan) Leoni, who was a year younger. They were these two carefree, flower-child girls, who were really into doing a lot of acid at the time. And I’ll never forget, one night, we all dropped acid, and I think it was Sylvia who started hallucinating that she saw these little men in parachutes, coming down out of the sky. And she called them the Moon Nazis. So, because the Moon Nazis were attacking us, she had to run out in the back and defend our property—.
“The apartment they had rented was from a very Orthodox Jew, who would give them a lot of trouble because they used to run around naked a lot and stuff. They would go up and down the freeway in a convertible and take their tops off, just to tantalize the truck drivers and things. They were pretty wild and crazy—.
“Kenneth and I actually … I really don’t know about Kenneth, if it was Kenneth’s first, but it was my first group sex scene. Many times there were Kenneth and I and either Sylvia—or Kenneth and I and Janice. Although to this day, Jan—who is now my ex-wife—doesn’t admit that we had ‘threesomes.’ ”
“But we have pictures!” cackled Boogie, enjoying the memory and his joke.
Early Memories & Arrests
≈ What is the earliest thing you remember? ≈
“I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1948, but I don’t really remember that,” said Boogie with an attempt at humor, while trying to briefly stall. “But I do remember being 3 years old, going into the top drawer of my grandfather’s dresser in Philadelphia, and taking pennies. These were Indian Head pennies. These were old pennies. I remember going to the corner store and buying penny-pieces of candy. I was three—, or 4 years old. I remember my younger brother, Jason and I … I was four. I was the old guy at the time. He was three. We did this, and went to the corner, which seemed like another fucking country—excuse my French—but ended up crossing a busy street and got stranded in the median. The police came. And rescued us. Those are my earliest recollections of Philadelphia.
“Wait, I also remember that—not that we had money or anything—but I remember that we had a live-in girl, a black lady that … I’ll try and remember her name … I think her name was Lena. And she took care of us while my parents were working, or doing whatever they did,” he scoffed. She prepared the meals. And how we afforded it back then, I have no idea. But I remember Lena taking care of us.”
≈ What do you remember about that time—about Leonard? ≈
“I remember my brother Lenny, my dad and my mom, but I just don’t have a lot of memories of that time. The earliest memories I have of interaction with Len are when we first moved to Florida in 1952. That was late ‘52, just before I turned five. So it might’ve been in 1953. And we lived in Southwest Florida. So again, I was five, and Lenny would’ve been nine. And Jason would’ve been four. I remember the family used to go on these outings to the beach, the whole family, and we would have fun.
“Dad loved playing with the kids. But Lenny was always kind of like, ‘Oh no! Another brother!’ ” said Boogie condescendingly, whining nasally in an attempt to imitate his older brother.
“Like someone to horn in on his action or something, I guess. He wasn’t too fond of me when I came, and then less fond when Jason came. You could see that he wasn’t thrilled about having brothers at the time, because it took away the attention off of him.”
With an enthusiastic inflection as he expelled the tale faster and faster, Boogie said breathlessly, “But I’ll never forget this, and again, this was when Len was nine, I was five and Jason was four. We were playing with some kind of … almost like a badminton type piece, like a little birdie or something, in the backyard of this duplex we lived in, and Jason accidentally knocked it up on a ledge, basically on the roof, and Lenny climbed up these railings to go rescue Jason’s little birdie and he slipped and fell and knocked out two teeth. I’ll never forget that,” Boogie announced triumphantly, stifling a short laugh with only moderate success. Then he allowed himself a small smile as he added mockingly, “And I’m sure he never forgot it either!
“I remember a lot of blood and stitches in those years, in the early 50s, when we first came to Florida. I remember coming home from the beach, then I slipped on the tiled front steps, and cracked open my head and had six stitches there.
“And the other thing I remember there, whenever any of us got sick with the normal childhood diseases, my mother,” almost spitting the word, “made sure we all got them at the same time! —That we all infected each other, so she wouldn’t have to go through it on separate occasions. So, if one of us got the chickenpox, we all had the chickenpox! If one of us got the mumps, we all had the mumps! One of us got the measles, we all had the measles! And that’s just the way it was in the Geller household in 1953, and —four, and —5.”
≈ How did you wind up in Florida? ≈
“Well that, obviously, was a decision of my father. You talk about a … a trek—I mean a major trek. It was like Magellan circumnavigating the globe here—us moving to Florida. Here we were, our first airplane flight, flying on a DC 6, four and a half hours flying from Philly to Florida—My dad had gone a couple weeks ahead with his partner, Frank Silverman. And they were, basically, going to open up a furniture store. And they just decided that Florida was a great place to live, and wide open for the taking, so to speak—And the family followed suit.
“Jason and I and Lenny and my mother were on the flight together. Everybody got sick except me, until the final minute, when I’m actually deplaning, and then I got nauseous and sick, too! So everybody threw up on that flight!
“It was a real adventure—going from, quote, the safety of our little tiny house in Philadelphia to this whole new experience in Florida.
“After a couple of years, we went from the apartment to my house,