The “Goodfellas” of Bishop Lynch

There is a certain sense of nostalgia I sometimes get but such fond memories only last a good five or ten minutes versus those days when I watch any movies from the 1980s (in what was the best decade and it wasn’t just the films from that era that made those years great) where my personal nostalgia lasts hours.

The kind of nostalgia I’m talking about is when I clean out the closet every few years and come across the yearbooks from 1984 to 1988 when I was a student at Bishop Lynch high school in Dallas. Those brief “nostalgic” feelings crept up again recently that made me think about the “goodfellas” I hung out with for four years at BL.

It brought to mind recently of a quote mobster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, said in Martin Scorsese’s underappreciated crime epic, "Goodfellas" (1990), that SHOULD have won Oscars for best picture and best director at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony and NOT for "The Departed" (2009) that Scorsese made almost two decades later.

“You know, we always called each other good fellas, "Like you said to, uh, somebody, ‘You're gonna like this guy. He's all right. He's a good fella. He's one of us.’ You understand? We were good fellas. Wiseguys.”

Most everyone knows that uneasy feeling they get when starting high school and have to begin a new chapter in their life that is nothing like the one they left behind in grade school in another state. Such was the feeling I had in mid-August 1984 Freshman year. For me, I saw it as something even more ominous; that impending sense of doom I am unable to stop from happening like when I watched "United 93" (2006) on Netflix in April this year that I hadn’t seen since its release.

Thankfully, that sense of dread lasted less than two weeks in the fall of 1984. It was when I first met Kelly Reed, whose locker was near mine. It was on a Thursday morning the second week of school and I was getting ready to head to the cafeteria to catch up on homework an hour before classes started.

He was having problems getting his locker open and asked me to open it. I was a little hesitant at first since school policy mandated that no one should give out their locker combination. I went ahead and opened the locker for him anyway. I would have continued on my way if he hadn’t introduced himself.

It didn't take long for the two of us to realize we did have some things in common such as movies, comic books and it turned out we were both in the same typing, health and speech classes together.

All through high school, the two of us would watch movies typecasting ourselves and everyone else from the class of 88’ in various films from the Mad Max trilogy (1979-1985), "Caddyshack" (1980), The Godfather movies (1972-1974) to the controversial foul-mouthed cocaine addicted, blood drenched underworld epic, "Scarface" (1983).

When watching the Star Wars trilogy, Kelly was Luke Skywalker. I was Han Solo. When we saw "Star Wars: The Special Edition" (1977) that celebrated its 20th anniversary in early 1997, at the General Cinema Northpark I & II theater in Dallas – a place that now exists only in memories, Kelly called the film’s ending our graduation ceremony.

In "The Blues Brothers" (1980), I was Joliet Jake, played by John Belushi and he was Elwood (Dan Aykroyd). The difference is one, you’d never see a light shining down on me from the Heavens while standing at the back of a church yelling, “I have seen the light,” and two, despite my now weighing what I was when I graduated high school (160 to 170 range down from the 300 I once was) I still cannot physically do cartwheels as Belushi’s Jake did.



You might have better luck seeing me dancing on those steps in Gotham City that viewers imitated on YouTube when they watched Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck in last fall’s depressing look at mental illness that masqueraded as a comic book villain origin movie called "Joker".



I have always believed most movie villains are the ones who have the most fun which is why I often typecast myself as the bad guy more so than the good guys when Kelly and I watched movies. To quote what Liotta’s Hill said in "Goodfellas" about mobster Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), “Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”

If there is one thing Kelly and I differed on was our taste in cars. Whereas he parked his 1971 Mustang fastback he owned during sophomore and junior year and the 1965 Malibu Super Sport he drove senior year in the school’s front parking lot, I parked my yellow rusted out 76’ Ford Pinto hand-me-down in the back of the school.

The issue wasn’t that I didn’t want to be seen in that “bright yellow banana” as seen in the 2010 action movie, "The Losers". No, I was not “embarrassed to be seen in an American classic” as said by a character in the film’s trailer. I couldn’t have cared less despite the fact the car had a broken passenger seat, no FM stations, no air conditioning and no protective gas covering. My issue was given my famous Italian/Hispanic temper that’s been known to go into overdrive since birth, I had zero patience for the after school traffic I’d have to put up with five days a week getting out of the front parking lot at 3:30 pm. That, and I was too cheap to buy a parking sticker.



For all the jokes I took from Kelly since getting my driver’s license the summer of 86’ during those high school years, I was able to prove him wrong one day during senior year thanks to an ice storm in early 1988 that canceled classes. Kelly came over for lunch and made me take the Pinto out in the ice since he didn’t want to take his Super Sport. Sure enough we got stuck barely a block away from my house. Between the back tires skidding and the Pinto going nowhere and my Hispanic/Italian temper beginning to kick in, I told Kelly to look at the speedometer.

“What is it you said how the Pinto will never hit 120 miles per hour,” I asked him.

Kelly’s eyes looked like they were about to go out of the sockets when he saw the needle past the 120-mile mark and yelled, “Don’t do that! You’re gonna blow your engine!” before I had him get out and push.

Barely a month had gone by that fall semester Freshman year before realizing that both of us together came off as troublemakers. Kelly and I would do anything in our power, for example, during the 85-86 sophomore year to get out of helping move furniture during gym class while everyone else was working. We'd hide and chat in the showers or the locker room throughout the whole period.

That was also the year when the two of us, and for all I know, were probably the only ones in the history of Bishop Lynch who failed Behind the Wheel with Coach Ed Stock. I don't remember what it was that Kelly messed up on the last day of class. What got me was the right turn Coach Stock told me to make except I did it from the left lane on a residential street. That alone took twenty points off from my score. I would have passed otherwise.

Kelly, being the rebel he often was, did such things as wear his army combat boots at graduation, sleep through health class and refuse to shave in the morning. I think at one point during senior year, he even got his ears pierced and wore an earring.

I was more of the rebel in a more unbelievable kind of way. “Unbelievable” meaning that because I was so quiet, none of the teachers would ever think it was me shouting the names "Andy!!!" and "Frosty!!!" during lunch period junior year; first names of whom belonged to that of the dean of students, Andy Zhilman and Frosty Leos, a theology instructor. My prank never failed. Both turned around almost every time in our direction and for four straight years neither could figure out who was doing it. It was plain and simple. If someone said, "Joe did it," the powers-that-be would never believe it and would have to pause briefly to investigate further utilizing all resources.

Zhilman and Leos would have never found out it weren't for two other friends I met freshman year whom Kelly knew, Joel Mathews and Tom Kelley. I learned back in the early 1990s that Joel told Leos at a homecoming game that it was me who yelled out his first name during lunch periods junior year.

“What movie had 42 people killed?”

Joel was the brain of our group who lived up to the reputation he would be the most successful in life out of all of us after finishing college and to an extent always took a lot of practical jokes from us.

When Tom asked Joel a movie question he got from a trivia game one day during lunch, “What movie had 42 people killed” adding a hint that would have made it easy for Joel to answer. “We watched it at Joe’s house.”

Joel shrugged like there was no point to the question and said, "Dawn of the Dead" (1978)?”

Kelly and I died laughing. Joel got the answer partially correct. We did watch director George A. Romero's "chomping" mall sequel, but it was at Kelly’s house. For the record, there were more than 42 “dead” people in that horror classic who played impeccably well-dressed cannibal eating, slow moving zombies. The one we watched where 42 people got knocked off that included the drug lord Al Pacino made famous was "Scarface."

This wasn’t the only time Joel had to put up with our jokes. When Kelly and Tom tried out for the football team sophomore year, Tom asked Joel why he didn’t try out. Joel’s response was “I don’t have any coins. Do you?” The comment was in reference to a football coin game the two played often times during lunch hour using less than ten pennies.

Yet despite the constant ribbing, the one thing I believe the three of us will agree on about Joel is he’s helped us out on more than one occasion during and after we left high school. A couple years after we graduated when he was in town on Christmas break from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, he bought us all framed movie portraits from a memorabilia store. He gave Tom a portrait of John Wayne, Kelly a portrait of Mel Gibson as Mad Max and a family portrait of the Corleone crime family showing Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan and John Cazale in "The Godfather" (1972). I seriously wasn’t expecting that!

“That’s life! That’s what all the people say…”

Tom liked hunting, the Texas Rangers baseball team, beer, food and was and I assume is still an avid reader on historical and political subjects. His screen idols were John Wayne and Orson Welles and his favorite movie character was Charles Foster Kane. Tom's interests in music varied from Frank Sinatra and country to Led Zeppelin and classical.

Up until him and I jammed to “Ol' Blue Eyes’” greatest hits one night driving to a press screening for the film, "Malice" (1993), the only three Frank Sinatra songs I had heard was 1965's "Summer Wind" and "Strangers In the Night" from 1966. The third was “I Believe I’m Gonna Love You” from 1975 on a 45 rpm single my dad played when I was growing up in the 1970s that today can only be heard on YouTube where the tune can be turned into an mp3 or mp4 for one’s iPod.

We listened to the Chairman of the Board’s 1967 single “The World We Knew (Over and Over)" several times on the way to the theater that night probably because I was hooked listening to it.

On our way home, however, Tom had the artist’s 1966 hit, “That’s Life” playing full blast in the truck to the point I don’t think anyone who might have heard it as we drove by wouldn't have minded the noise pollution. The way Tom banged out the lyrics read like a brief screenplay.

Sinatra: “That’s life!”

Tom yelling at me to sing the next line in unison: “That’s what all the people say…”

Sinatra: “You’re riding high in April, shot down in May!”

Tom yelling over the volume at me to sing the next line together in unison: “But I know I’m gonna change that tune when I’m back, back on top in June! I say that’s life!”

This wasn’t the first time Tom expressed himself with his “singing” voice though I don’t think he’d make it as a contestant on "American Idol" (2003-present). When I rented the 1972 musical, "1776", he sang every song by heart the moment the cast broke into song. Had the lyrics been posted at the bottom of the screen for viewers at home to sing along the way cable networks do for such beloved musicals like "Grease" (1978) and "Mamma Mia!" (2008) today, Tom would have had no need for them. At one point as we watched the film, Tom told me to join in. I didn’t.

Like Joel who dealt with our jokes and my putting up with Kelly’s jokes on me, I also took a lot of ribbing from Tom especially when it came to my “liberalism” during the early 90s, seeing since at the time I collected books on President Kennedy, the JFK assassination and the Kennedy family and yes, I voted for Bill Clinton in the 92’ presidential election and was even more ashamed I voted straight Democrat that November.

Truth be damned, however, I have been a closet ultra-hard-right wing/conservative my whole life. It just took foregoing my plans to major in biased “fake” journalism to fully realize it and getting the hell away from all the die-hard, bleeding heart socialist liberal/anti-law enforcement friends I worked with at the college newspaper at what was then called East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas from 1991 to 1994.

That didn’t stop me, however, back in the late 80s and early 90s following our graduation taking great joy poking fun at Tom’s fascination with conservative pundit, Rush Limbaugh. When the two of us dropped by Macys one Saturday to get himself a “Rush Limbaugh” tie, seeing the display of clip-on ties I saw displayed alongside the “Limbaugh ties”, I kept urging Tom to reconsider and get himself a couple clip-ons instead since I heard "Cheers" postal carrier, Cliff Clavin, swore by them. Every time I mentioned it Tom would stop what he was doing, give me a blank stare for a few seconds and then continue browsing the assortment of “Limbaugh ties.”

That wasn’t the only time over the years he displayed the same blank stare reaction. Tom did that when he came by at the most inopportune moments on Saturday afternoons when I was at my snarkiest working the registers at Dallas based Blockbuster Video (1988-1996). He’d stand behind the shelves near the registers staring at me without my noticing as I checked out customers herding them out the door like cattle in between arguing with some deadbeat telling them to cough up the $1500 bucks in late fees they owed. When I finally did recognize him after clearing out all the human traffic him and I would die laughing and then he’d ask me “what’s with all the people here?” My response to that was, “DON’T…GET ME STARTED!”

I don't believe Tom and I had a single thing in common other than the fact our favorite episode from the classic "Star Trek" (1966-1969) television series was "The Doomsday Machine."

Much the way Kelly and I typecast ourselves in movies we watched, we also cast Joel and Tom in various roles as well. Tom, for example, was Darth Vader and Joel was Peter Cushing’s Governor Tarkin in "Star Wars".

“Why am I always the one who gets killed,” Joel asked one time.

We weren’t the ONLY ones who used movie references. There wasn’t a day or a week that went by during sophomore year that I didn’t hear class of 88’ friend, Von Minor, call Tom “Ogre-D” in reference to the bulky beer guzzling football player in "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984).

Like Joel, who helped the three of us at one time or another, Tom bailed me out on a number of occasions throughout the 90s…more so than he needed to.

The Final Years

The only thing I can say about junior year (1986-87) is that I started counting down the months to graduation which was still another full year away. I was regrettably more Dr. Jekyll during the fall 86-87 and 87-88 school years than Mr. Hyde. Years before Kelly remarked that the ending of "Star Wars" was our graduation ceremony, my twisted vision resembled the musical climax from Alan Parker’s "Fame" (1980).

I think I hated junior year so much that when I hooked up with friend and fellow 88’ alum, Anne Marie Ross, on Fakebook (yes I know it’s called Facebook but it will ALWAYS be “Fakebook” to me), in 2016, I jokingly told her how, “You mean no one ever told you the tale? How because I was so high on psychedelic drugs that year the only thing I remember is drawing a picture of you with that big ball of hair and those striking blue eyes of yours during classes that when another student asked me who that was, I told him it was “Anne Marie Ross in the Sky of Diamonds?”

All right! The drug reference is only half true and is part of a Beatles reference where lead singer/founder, John Lennon, revealed in an interview that the inspiration for the 1967 song, “Lucy In the Sky of Diamonds” was not the result of the “Fab Four” doing LSD but of a drawing his son, Julian, did. I’ve never done illegal substances my whole life. The only drugs I do now are the legal kind prescribed by the doctors for such “pain-in-the-ass” diseases like diabetes. Now that I think about it, I am not all that gifted when it comes to artwork either.

“The only guy that I know that can handle something like this.”

I haven’t seen much of the “goodfellas” in recent years.

The last time I saw Tom was in either 2004 or 2005 when we had lunch one day and he was studying to become a priest. He didn’t go to the 30th reunion in 2018. Only Joel and I went where I learned that Tom now works for the IRS.

The last time I saw Kelly was in 2006 after my diabetes diagnosis when he was still working for a local sports publication selling ads before leaving to start his own local sports publication called The Blitz Weekly. Thanks to him, albeit briefly, I got the chance to finally compose my epic page long film reviews for the publication he worked for as well writing film reviews (much smaller though – one big paragraph to be exact) and columns for his magazine before deciding to go my own way and blog whenever my mood hits in between working a 40-hour-a-week job at an IT helpdesk.

Kelly, who didn’t go to the 30th reunion in 2018 because of a family commitment, texted me on “Fakebook” that weekend how the four of us should get together for a trip to Las Vegas or New Orleans. That was before COVID-19 hit. If we went to Vegas today, we’d be wearing face masks.

Such a reunion, however, may be nothing more than wishful thinking. The kind of wishful thinking fans of the “Fab Four” hoped would happen in their lifetime after The Beatles broke up in 1970 only to have all that tragically end ten years later.

By comparison, perhaps the only possibility of us getting together again is when one of us leaves this world. The way my health has been since 2015 (three hospital stays now for diabetes) the first person to become one with The Force out of the four of us will likely be me. Still, it’s nice to know when I do depart, I will continue to be immortalized much like the picture of the street corner friend and also class of 88’ alum, Grant Stewart, posted on his Facebook page that displays his name. The difference with me is I’ll be immortalized in a clip called “Joe Stumpo” from the 2013 film, "Clear History", that starred Larry David.

Stewart was the one who told me about the infamous clip a few years back. I died laughing. So too did the powers-that-be at work to the point management considered playing the clip at an all-staff meeting were it not for that shocking “F” word. I think when my ashes are sent to space as the Electric Light Orchestra’s 1981 song “Twenty First Century Man” is playing in the background (I want to leave this world “literally” when the Almighty or 666 calls me home) in my will I will ask that my urn inside that rocket have the comment one of the characters in that YouTube clip says following the words, Here lies Joe Stumpo…“The only guy that I know that can handle something like this.”

Autograph prices start at 25 bucks!

©7/1/20