5th Annual ALPCA Garden State Meet

I am writing this entry in  two parts the first part is the report I sent to the ALPCA discussion list where I described how the meet went. The second part is an observation of the lunch that followed at Charlie Blood's

Well another great Garden  State meet has come and gone and this was the best meet yet! This year 52 ALPCA members and their guests gathered at the American Legion Hall Post in Elmwood Park, NJ. This was the farthest south we had the meet, even if  it was only a few miles, picked out by Ed Natale. This turned out to be a major hit! Doors opened a little prior to 8 AM to swift trading and a few good laughs. Steve Benson aka 16 Lizards came from Arizona to take the unofficial long distance award for the second year in a row, his partner in plates Mike Glauboch took the drive up from Kentucky and Chuck Bahnor drove out from Indiana. We really do attract members from all over. My  co-host for the event was Jason DeCesare who helped in every way possible, getting the  food, working the registration desk, correcting my spreadsheets and most  importantly driving me to the meet !   Doors were supposed to open at 8AM but a few early birds managed to sneak in a little early. By 9 AM trading was brisk and laughter was heard throughout the hall.  Our resident auction Ron Ridolph was overjoyed to find a built in PA system, altho ugh Jason wound up making a few announcements of his own. We had a very successful auction thanks to Marco, Jon Lebowitz, Jim Moini and Elaine Hadjadj, wife of NJ member Xavier Hadjadj, who served as auction secretary!  Everyone liked  the location so much, we decided to book it for next year mark your calendars now for November 8,2014 when we do it all over again. After the meet a group of us made our way over to Charlie Bloods in nearby Garfield where owner Sal Benanti served hot pizza and cold beers, the bar was decorated with license plates, so I gave Sal an old NJ plate to commemorate what we hope will be a tradition  for many years to come!

Respectfully Submitted
Justin Mattes ALPCA#6748
ALPCA Garden State Region
 
Location: Elmwood Park, NJ, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering Grandma in Florida

My dad and I are in Florida for the month of March because the wnters in Cape May are horrible. I also can't stand dad complaining about the wind up there 24/7. So a few years ago my mom started looking at places to rent or even eventuall buy. We were down here during the very beginning of COVID so while we flew down, we drove back. Later it was  determined we would drive down, something my father always wanted to do. So this year my father was determined so with a lot of planning (not really) he mapped out a three  day road  trip fro, Cape May down to West Palm Beach. We took the ferry .over to Delaware and proceeded down to an overnight in North Carolina and another somewhere in Georgia. I managed to pick up seven new counties in Georgia and North Carolina. No bad if you ask me By now you're wondering what this has to do with my Grandma. Well when my grandparent got older they bought a house in Naples, Florida.   They beccame snow birds, just like most people in their seventi
More Posts to Mattes's Madness

One Contact - Five Lighthouses--W9C

Back in the summer I wrote an entry in here about my Lighthouse phone contact with Bill,N8ET , so now I had to top that with a five lighthouse PSK contact in Wisconsin! I was orginally going to wait until I got the card like my other contacts but I think at this stage of the game you can take my word for it. This contact was with a husband and wife team also known as "Team Cheese"--WI9TC (I love the callsign). Like the contact with Bill, they were in the line of sight of five lighthouses located on the Wisconsin shores of Lake Michigan. As soon as I saw them on the BeaconBot (the e-mail reflector used to notify people of lighthouse activations-) I knew I had to take my best shot. There were tons of stations dying to get a contact. Well after some monitoring of the waterfall and waiting for a break in the QSO's, I dropped my call. Unfortunately I was getting overpowered a lot so I actually wound up waiting for quite awhile. Although I have to admit it was also fun just
More Posts to Mattes's Madness

Twenty Seven years later

If we've been friends on Facebook for more than a year you'll know I have told this story countless times. However it's a story worth telling since it'sa how I started writing. I was having dinner wi th a girl from high school. on the way home we stopped by Fusco's Market to get her cigarettes and I got a root beer. I got home to find my dad sleeping on the couch while my mother and brothers were out. I went upstairs, just started typing and never stopped/ A year later she wrote in my yearbook "Just keep doing what you're doing, smiling, writing and touching my life." I have ,written articles, spoken in front of Congress, written poetry for countless people, and done so much more. I admit my writing sometimes gets me into hot water; Here it is twenty seven years later and I'm still doing what I promised her! People say my writing is a gift so it's fitting I started the night before my 19th birthday!! Cheers to 46!! (it's tomorrow)
More Posts to Mattes's Madness