Ace Frehley - No Regrets

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Copyright 2011 by Ace Frehley

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition November 2011

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Designed by Joy OMeara

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-1394-0

ISBN 978-1-4516-1396-4 (ebook)

TO ALL THE ACE FREHLEY FANS IN THE UNIVERSE

When I was a kid I used to carry around this awful image in my heada picture of three men tangled awkwardly in high-tension wires, fifty feet in the air, their lifeless bodies crisping in the midday sun.

The horror they endured was shared with me by my father, an electrical engineer who worked, among other places, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, helping with the installation of a new power plant in the 1950s. Carl Frehley was a man of his times. He worked long hours, multiple jobs, did the best he could to provide a home for his wife and kids. Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons after church, hed pile the whole family into a car and wed drive north through the Bronx, into Westchester County, and eventually find ourselves on the banks of the Hudson River. Dad would take us on a tour of the West Point campus and grounds, introduce us to people, even take us into the control room of the electrical plant. Im still not sure how he pulled that one offgetting security clearance for his whole familybut he did.

Dad would walk around, pointing out various sights, explaining the rhythm of his day and the work that he did, sometimes talking in the language of an engineer, a language that might as well have been Latin to me. Work was important, and I guess in some way he just wanted his kids to understand that; he wanted us to see this other part of his life.

One day, as we headed back to the car, my father paused and looked up at the electrical wires above, a net of steel and cable stretching across the autumn sky.

You know, Paul, he said, every day at work, we have a little contest before lunch.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

A contest? Before lunch?

Sounded like something we might have done at Grace Lutheran, where I went to elementary school in the Bronx.

We draw straws to see who has to go out and pick up sandwiches for the whole crew. If you get the shortest straw, youre the delivery boy.

That was the beginning. From there, my father went on to tell us the story of the day he drew the short straw. While he was out picking up sandwiches, there was a terrible accident back on the job. Someone had accidentally thrown a switch, restoring power to an area where three men were working. Tragically, all three men were electrocuted instantly. When my father returned, he couldnt believe his eyes. The bodies of his coworkers were being peeled off the high-tension wires.

Right up there, he said quietly, looking overhead. Thats where it happened.

He paused, put a hand on my shoulder.

If I hadnt drawn the short straw that day, Id have been up there in those wires, and I wouldnt be here right now.

I looked at the wires, then at my father. He smiled.

Sometimes you get lucky.

Dad would repeat that story from time to time, just often enough to keep the nightmares flowing. That wasnt his intent, of coursehe always related the tale in a whimsical what if? tonebut it was the outcome nonetheless. You tell a little kid that his old man was nearly fried to death, and youre sentencing him to a few years of sweaty, terror-filled nights beneath the sheets. I get his point now, though. You never know what life might bring or when it might come to a screeching halt.

And its best to act accordingly.

The Carl Frehley I knew (and its important to note that I didnt know him all that well) was quiet and reserved, a model of middle-class decorum, maybe because he was so fucking tired all the time. My father was forty-seven years old by the time I came into this world, and I sometimes think he was actually deep into a second life at that point. The son of German and Dutch immigrants, hed grown up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, finished three years of college, and had to leave school and go to work. Later on he moved to New York and married Esther Hecht, a pretty young girl seventeen years his junior. My mom had been raised on a farm in Norlina, North Carolina. My grandfather was from northern Germanythe island Rgen, to be precise. My grandmother was also German, but Id always heard whispers of there being some American Indian blood in our family. It was boredom, more than anything else, that brought my mom to New York. Tired of life on the farm, she followed her older sister Ida north and lived with her for a while in Brooklyn.

Dad, meanwhile, came for the work.

There was always a little bit of mystery surrounding my dad, things he never shared; nooks and crannies of his past were always a taboo subject. He married late, started a family late, and settled into a comfortable domestic and professional routine. Every so often, though, there were glimpses of a different man, a different life.

My dad was an awesome bowler, for example. He never talked about being part of a bowling league or even how he learned the game. God knows he only bowled occasionally while I was growing up, but when he did, he nailed it. He had his own ball, his own shoes, and textbook form that helped him throw a couple of perfect games. He was also an amazing pool player, a fact I discovered while still in elementary school, when he taught me how to shoot. Dad could do things with a pool cue that only the pros could do, and when I look back on it now I realize he may have spent some time in a few shady places. He once told me that he had beaten the champion of West Virginia in a game of pool. I guess you have to be pretty good to beat the state champion of any sport.