Remembering Chris Mackaronis

The sad reality of life at 75, as I write this in March, 2020, is that a few of my peers – work colleagues, classmates, childhood friends, a cousin – have left us – not a lot yet – but enough to be a reminder of ones own mortality. What is especially sad, though, is when a friend in a younger cohort goes. That was the case with Chris Mackaronis.

Chris died on 6 March 2020 at the age of 67 after a five-year struggle with HPV head and neck cancer.

While we were not close, not even Facebook friends, and I had not seen him in 24 years, his death prompted me to reflect on our childhood and the times we were together. I’ll try to keep this chronological order but there are bound to be some items out of sequence.

George, Meg and Chris. Meg thinks it was taken in December, 1960.

Chris and I grew up just a few houses away in Milltown, NJ. With an eight-year gap between us we would ordinarily not have connected but his older brother, George, and I were good friends, spent a lot of time together and, through George, I came to know Chris and their sister, Meg.

First, a few words about George to fix context. It is sometimes hard to know exactly when you met a childhood friend – some are almost like siblings who have always been there as far back as you can remember. That was not the case with George. I have a clear image of seeing him on a little tricycle on the side lawn of his house shortly after he moved to Milltown. He was around two or three and I was seven or eight. Beyond that, though, I have no idea how our friendship developed but at some point we were doing a lot together including spending a lot of time working on cars. Even a five-year gap in childhood is almost another generation but George and I were kindred spirits – both geeks at a time before there were geeks.

George (left, peering out) and Chris (right, on step) playing in my back-yard tree house.

I have no recollection of Chris’s birth, probably because George and I were not yet playing much together, but I do have a clear recollection of Meg’s birth three years later. While I don’t have many memories of playing with Chris it is clear from the photo of George and Chris in my tree house in my back yard that we did.

Early on I remember playing in the Mackaronis basement. Mr. Mackaronis had finished the basement, putting down a floor and building cabinets. The cabinets included a bench with a hinged top with space under the bench for toy storage. On the left of the bench was an enclosed space supporting a flat surface, essentially an end table to the bench. While that space was not accessible from the front there was a small opening at the left end of the toy storage area, under the bench. With my terrible claustrophobia I have no idea how I ever did it but George, Chris and I would climb into the bench, crawl through the small opening, and play inside the cabinet. I even remember taking a electric lamp in with us one day to light the space.

Meg holding an umbrella while Chris shoots. Taken behind my house. Chris is using a Kodak Signet camera.

Despite the age difference Chris and I shared a common interest in photography. I humbly acknowledge that I probably inspired and encouraged that interest and perhaps even helped him with equipment and supplies, just as my friend Larry DeMatteo helped me. I was pleased that Chris built a darkroom in his basement and remember him proudly showing it to me. George recently expressed gratitude for Chris’s photography as his photos captured details of ordinary, day-to-day life in the household, details otherwise lost to time.

Sometime from the 1964 to 1966 time frame I remember a harmless prank I pulled on Chris although he was none too pleased. I was in my early computer hacking days, spending a lot of time writing programs at the Rutgers Computer Center. Software then was not written on a terminal and stored on a hard drive or in the cloud as it is now but rather it was stored in the pattern of holes punched on a stiff piece of paper known as an IBM card or generically, as a punched card.

The cards were punched by typing on a keyboard on a device known as a ‘keypunch’ machine’ where the punchings, called as chad and memorable from the 2000 presidential election (think ‘hanging chad’), accumulated in a box for disposal. For reasons not entirely clear I once brought home a large container of chad collected from several keypunch machines. And this is where the prank began.

There is not a lot use for chad – confetti comes to mind but that is a really bad idea because punched cards have sharp edges and a little bit of lubricating oil that can stain clothing, especially a bridal gown, a frequent target of confetti. So without any real use for my chad I poured a small layer on top of the water in a toilet bowl. I showed it to Chris and managed to convince him that the bowl was full of chad and he should reach into it. He was quite angry when he stuck his hand in and discovered water just beneath the chad. While it was clean water there was still something pretty gross about touching it.

I remember another prank probably in the same time period, this time involving a football and the chemical, nitrogen triodide. Nitrogen triodide is easily made by mixing iodine crystals with ammonia, both readily available (at least at the time) at college chem labs. The chemical is harmless in solution but after it dries it is extremely unstable. The slightest touch, even the vibration of chalk on a chalkboard, even alpha radiation, can detonate it.

Chris and his football, likely taken in December, 1960. This is probably the football that got the purple stain.

I placed a small amount on the road near our homes. After it dried I demonstrated its explosive properties to Chris by throwing his football on it. It made a sharp bang, gave off a purple cloud of iodine vapor, but it also left quite a large purple stain on the football. It didn’t harm the football and I was pretty sure the stain would eventually dissipate as the iodine sublimated but Chris was none too pleased to have a purple football. I seem to remember checking back with him a few days later and the stain was indeed gone.

And speaking of football, another memory concerns what was probably Super Bowl I (January 1967) or at least one of the very early Super Bowls. Both George and Chris knew that my interest in sports was essentially zero, not much different from that of George. But for some reason I decided I wanted to watch the Super Bowl that year. Not wanting to watch it alone and knowing the rest of the Mackaronis family were big sports fans (Chris’s father, George, was a star basketball player at Rutgers in the 1940s) I invited myself to watch the game at their house. I have a recollection of a certain amount of incredulity at my interest but also being warmly welcomed and maybe even offered a beer.

I read Time Magazine for many, many years. It was a distillation of news from the prior week and my main source of print news since I rarely read daily newspapers. Articles in Time were about world leaders, famous people, infamous people, people that I only read about, never knew personally. So it was quite a thrill to see the name ‘Christopher Mackaronis’ mentioned in Time. I thought “Hey, I know that guy.” Chris then worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the article was about his work there.

Sometime in the early 1970s I briefly entertained the idea of returning to school for an MBA. With two kids, a house, and a job the thought quickly passed but not before I took the College Board exam. The exam was given in Princeton, an hour or so away from my home. I wanted to be well rested for the exam and so, rather than getting up early to make the drive from home, I wanted to stay in Princeton the night before. Chris was a Princeton undergrad and kindly let me stay on a couch in his dorm room. I somehow managed to forget my watch, an important detail for pacing the exam, and so Chris also kindly loaned me his with directions to drop it in a mail slot at his dorm entrance after the exam, which, of course, I did, or so I thought. A few days later Chris calls asking what happened to his watch. There was a certain regularity to the entrances of his dorm and I managed to drop it at the wrong door. We figured out over the phone where I actually put it and he retrieved it from one of the residents there. Thank goodness – it was a fine watch that I did not want to have to replace.

Chris at the Princeton Reunion P-rade, spring 1994.

We also crossed paths at Princeton some twenty or so years later in the spring of 1994. Chris was there for his 20th reunion; I was there for the graduation of my daughter, Suzie. Those two activities intersected at the ‘P-rade’, a parade of alumni joined by graduating seniors. I was able to catch up with Chris, if ever so briefly, at his class marshaling area before the parade started. I guess we both had changed a bit since we last saw each other over twenty years before but we did recognize each other.

The last time I saw Chris was at his mother’s funeral in 1996. We probably spoke a little, condolences and that sort of thing, but I really don’t remember much of a conversation though I might have mentioned the Time Magazine article. It was a busy day with a lot of people around, no time for catching up. I was with my grand children in California when his dad died in 2014 so I was unable to be at his funeral.

George and I usually get together once a year or so. George often talked about Chris and Meg and through him I followed their careers, families, Chris’s struggle with cancer, and sadly, now his death. My condolences to George, Meg, and the greater Mackaronis family.

Chris, me, George in front of my house. Date unknown.