Sure enough, Danny Rios Farrell, my former roommate — and a huge hockey fan in his own right — found the library standing alone in the hallway. “They must have forgotten to take it,” Danny told me by phone. “What should I do?”
I told him to just take good care of them and I’d get back to him; but I never did. No problem. I had virtually every book I had needed in my new Israeli digs and conveniently forgot the missing Manhattan bookshelves. Fortunately, Danny took good care of them until he took in a new roommate who was not a hockey fan.
Also, not a fan of the hockey library. For some reason, he demanded that the books be removed or he’d toss the collection in a dumpster some midnight. (Remember, I knew that none of this was happening.)
Good hockey fan that he is — and was — Danny was determined to save the books and found a mutual friend, John Fayolle, who would join the “Save The Books” campaign. He offered to relieve Danny of the library.
“I realized how valuable the collection was and I didn’t want them turned into garbage,” Fayolle later revealed. “Danny brought them to my Manhattan apartment and that’s where I stored them for safekeeping.” (Remember, I still
had no idea that this literary melodrama was unfolding.)
Then, one day out of nowhere, I got a call from Fayolle. “I have a friend of the family coming to live with us,” he told me, “and I have a ton of your hockey books here and I have to get rid of them right away. What should I do?”
“WHAT?” I gasped. “YOU HAVE HOCKEY BOOKS OF MINE?”
He sure did but now he had to unload them — pronto!
Trying very hard to remain calm, I put my thinking cap on and immediately thought of my Long Island buddy, author Joe Rossi. Joe had written a wonderful book about Long Island Ducks star Buzzy Deschamps with an intro by Isles icon Bryan Trottier. I figured that my library might be a neat gift to him.
So, I contacted Joe with my plan and Rossi wrote back. “I’ve got a better idea; why don’t you donate them to UBS Arena and the Islanders?”
I felt like whacking myself a few times in my head while musing: “How come I didn’t think of that?”
That done, I told Pal Joey that I loved his idea but who was to say the Islanders would as well. Then, there was Sir Fayolle needing the books gone before his new tenant was about to arrive.
