After high school, he was drafted into the army as a medical officer. Jeremiah went to Germany, where he was a dental hygienist. While there, he would play music at schools. After he left the army, Jeremiah went to UMPI for a semester. He commented, “college just wasn’t for me”, and left for the Hawaiian Air Force base. He took flying lessons, flew a 44 passenger aircraft and made “2 or 3” solo cross-country flights in a biplane. JJeremiah worked for Delta Air Lines for seventeen years. After leaving the Delta, he went to work in landscaping and plumbing, which is his job today.
As a child, his family would take trips to Mama Olore’s restaurant, Roma Cafe. The Cafe was in an apartment over Oaks Appliance. You would have to call in advance to reserve a seat. They served pasta and other good Italian food. Hartt’s Restaurant “served the best pizza you could ever imagine.” It had a soda fountain, and jukebox. There was also a pool hall in town where he would go after school to play pool or the pinball machine. There was a drug store called Rexol. It served hot peanuts and ice cream.
There was a terrible hurricane in the 1970s that knocked down trees. The snow banks would reach as high as the telephone wires. During one terrible storm, lighting hit in the middle of a cow pasture killing the whole herd of cows.
One story Jeremiah told me was about an apple, an uncle, and two sneaky boys. As a kid, Jeremiah and his brother would spend the night at their uncle’s house. In their uncle’s backyard there was an apple tree, with one apple on it. He told the boys not to pick that apple, “or we’d get our butts kicked.” There was a window on the house facing the tree with the apple. One day the boys decided they wanted a bite of that apple, they cut off a piece of the apple on the side that was facing away from the window, so he couldn’t see the cut from the window. The apple began to “wither, and wither, and wither” until it was a little brown raisin. His uncle never did punish them because they didn’t actually pick the apple. To this day they still discuss it and joke about it.