AUGUST 7, 2023 – It was March 1988. Beth, Cory and I were just passing through Rutherford on our way to Boston. Grandpa had died just a month before, and it was a good time to see how Gaga and Uncle Bruce were doing. Four years had passed since my previous visit to Rutherford. While Beth and Cory, who was not even two, kept Gaga company, Uncle Bruce took me on a little tour of the ground-floor retail space that fronted Park Avenue.
“We’ve got a new tenant where the old laundromat used to be,” he said. “His name is Cliff, and he rents out all kinds of costumes. Halloween costumes, party costumes. He’s got everything you can think of in there. Goblins and witches and scarecrows—my golly!”
It was called the Fun Ghoul store, and through the large, plate-glass windows, I could see hanging costumes, smiling skeletons, mock spider webs, gory masks, and all sorts of props and accessories that merged into huge amounts of clutter[1]. The place was jammed with merchandise. On the one hand, the store didn’t do much for the overall appearance of the decrepit buildings and their vast quantities of unorganized contents, but on the other hand, this horror, Halloween establishment fit right in with the old, tired property. Uncle Bruce patted his toupee down with three quick taps and pulled upon the door to Fun Ghoul.
Behind the counter amidst the ghoulish clutter stood a character who himself seemed to be in costume[2]. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, stood well over six feet tall, sported a powerful and prankish smile, and had long, spiky, shaggy, blond hair. From his right ear lobe dangled a gumball-size, plastic, human skull on a two-inch, silver chain. He wore jeans with a ruby-eyed, screaming, silver skull on the belt buckle, and a burgundy, silk shirt of a style befitting Mick Jagger[3]. He looked like an in-your-face rock star, not a Holman tenant, and I wondered how Uncle Bruce had decided to rent ground floor, retail space to such a character.
Uncle Bruce stepped up to the counter and greeted Cliff with great verve, as if Cliff and his whole get-up were entirely Uncle Bruce’s invention. “Cliff, I want you to meet my nephew, Eric from Minnesota!” He shouted it out.
“Hey, what’s happenin’? Hi, Eric. Cliff Witmyer,” were his first gregarious words. He greeted me with a big handshake and a robust New Jersey accent. The introduction triggered the memory of Uncle Bruce driving me home from Sterling after that year in Vermont 20 years before and arguing with me over the length of my hair and telling me that it was “just plain wrong.” And now, I thought, He rents space to a guy who not only has hair five times as long as mine had been back then, but a guy who wears a skull-earring and a Mick Jagger shirt? “So what brings you out to the great state of New Jersey? Too cold for you out there in Minnesota?” Cliff asked.
“No, I’m headed for Boston for a concert with my sisters.”
“Concert? What kind of concert?”
“Violin. Four violins. They’re four of us, see, and we’re playing a concerto for four violins[4].”
“I knew your sisters were musicians, because your uncle has told me all about ’em, but I didn’t know you were a musician too.”
“Well, I’m not as serious as they are, but I play some, so we’re doing this gig together.”
“That sounds great,” he said, with a tone of genuineness that I liked. “I was a musician myself—not your kind of musician, but a musician . . .”
“Eric’s a lawyer,” said Uncle Bruce, cutting him off, “just like his sister Kristina.”
“Really? Yeah, I’ve met Kristina,” said Cliff. “So you’re a lawyer too? That’s great, just great, but do you get out here very often?”
“No, not very often.” I didn’t know what to make of Cliff. He reminded me of absolutely no one with whom I had ever been acquainted or would likely ever be. He seemed friendly enough, but I could only imagine what his true gig was—where he’d come from, who he really was, what kind of operation he ran. I even wondered if his little house of horrors wasn’t some kind of front for a real bunch of horrors, this being New Jersey and still a very alien place to my sensibilities, despite the considerable amount of time I’d spent there over the years. I tried not to think of the irony of a horror shop occupying the Holman warehouses, which given their condition, would have worked well as a haunted set for a horror flick.
He seemed to read my mind. “So, what do you think of a bunch of horror costumes being stored in the old Holman buildings?” Cliff let out a laugh. “I’ll bet ol’ George B. Holman would roll over in his grave if he could see it.” Cliff laughed again, a big, powerful laugh. I was just a little taken aback that a seemingly irreverent guy with dangling skull earring would invoke the name of my great grandfather.
“How’s business today?” Uncle Bruce asked him. “Are we getting much traffic?” The question seemed to have been posed for my benefit, to show me that now, he, Uncle Bruce, was playing the true role of landlord, of running a business, of having his finger right on the pulse of things.
“Yeah, people are coming in. We’re gearing up for St. Patrick’s Day. People want to party really hard, so they’re asking for stuff, you know.” Just then, a couple of little bells rang behind us as the door opened and a couple of would-be customers entered the shop. “Hey, what’s happenin’?” Cliff greeted them. They grunted a return greeting.
Uncle Bruce and I stepped aside to make room for business in the crowded space. “Alright, Cliff,” said Uncle Bruce, raising his hand and turning to the doorway. I followed his cue and waved good-bye to Cliff as well. “Nice meeting you, Cliff,” I called out.
“Likewise,” said Cliff. The little bells on the door rustled as we stepped back out onto the sidewalk and Uncle Bruce patted his toupee again.
On subsequent visits to Rutherford in conjunction with business meetings I had in New York, I would accompany Uncle Bruce on stops at the Fun Ghoul shop. Over the years, Cliff’s store would expand, and his name would receive regular mention in communications by or about Gaga and Uncle Bruce. “Cliff has been a big help to Uncle Bruce,” Gaga would write in her short, newsy letters.
Mother, meanwhile, would report on her latest phone contact with 42 Lincoln Avenue, and recount notable information. “I talked with Gaga yesterday,” she’d say, “and she said Cliff brought her flowers to brighten up her day room.” Or “Uncle Bruce says Cliff helped him move all the garden supplies from one of the garages into one of the sheds, so that the garage can be rented out now.” Or, “They had terrific rains on Friday night, and Uncle Bruce had to get Cliff to come over Saturday to help mop up all the water that had spilled in by Grandpa’s old office.” Or simply, “Cliff, I guess, has been a big help lately.”
Cliff had become more than a tenant. He seemed to be a reliable, helping hand and even a friend to Uncle Bruce. I never saw anything beyond the front of the store, however, and never heard more than casual, albeit complimentary, remarks about Cliff. My direct encounters with him on my periodic visits remained superficial, and their cumulative effect gave me little insight into the relationship that had developed between Mr. New Jersey Ghoul Meister, Mr. Fun Ghoul, and my eccentric, toupee-patting uncle in his late 60s living with my house-bound grandmother born in the Victorian Age, now in her late 90s.
If on occasion my sisters wondered aloud as to whether Cliff was vying for undue influence over our moneyed relatives, I decided I had no particular evidence to conclude that Cliff’s relationship with Gaga and Uncle Bruce was driven by an ulterior motive. I simply viewed Cliff as perhaps eccentric in his own right, and given his New Jersey accent and habitual “What’s happenin’?” greeting, I considered him to be naïve—so much so that I thought he might be unable to discern the eccentricity of the whole Holman set-up, as it were, the patently nutty aspect of a landlord patting an ill-fitting toupee, wearing a pork-pie hat, and sporting a key chain with 80 gazillion keys jangling from the belt loop of greasy trousers.
That was all before the train-ride to Montana in February of 1996.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[3] Not to give away too much prematurely, but many years later, Cliff will come within a hair’s breadth of booking the Stones for a backyard party (the year after he’d booked the Who) of another character who himself plays a critical role in the unfolding story. But for that chapter, the reader must wait.
