Comments from Tom Benigno fka Tom Castagna

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Tom Benigno  fka Tom Castagna
Tom Benigno fka Tom Castagna commented about Gables Theatre on Aug 15, 2015 at 2:13 pm

The Lupo I remember well, was easy to distinguish. He was short, a bit fat, wore glasses. He hired me to clean the outside then I became an usher. I definitely wasn’t working there when you were manager. When I started, Dave and Mary were dating. My name is Tom, but I am not the Tom you are talking about. But there’s more to the story. The Mary you are talking about, who eventually became Asst. Manager under Lupo, eventually broke up with Dave, and started dating me. I wasn’t the cause of the break-up, but it did put a bit of a rift between Dave and me. Dave was a good guy. I understood. Mary strung me along for about a year to a year and a half. I was a dumb 18-19 year old, very fond of Mary. She was not nearly as fond of me. Eventually, I ended it. I was tired of being miserable. Fact is, she ended it a lot sooner by her actions,only it took me awhile to get the message. Now here’s a funny trivia fact. While I was in law school, Mary married, and her and her husband bought a house 2 doors away from mine.Though I found this quite disconcerting at the time (Mary was my first real girlfriend), and I was on my 2nd or 3rd girlfriend by then, I couldn’t believe it—of all the homes on Long Island! Truth be told, I mattered for naught. I got a laugh out of it then though, and still do.

Tom Benigno  fka Tom Castagna
Tom Benigno fka Tom Castagna commented about Gables Theatre on Aug 14, 2015 at 11:41 pm

I worked there from 1972 to 1976—throughout college. The first manager was a Mr. Lupo. The second was a very nice lady named Ms. Kaye. After a few years, Lupo got fired for dipping into the till, then Kaye took over. There was no balcony when I worked there. The projection booth was upstairs as were the bathrooms. I must say that I enjoyed my time there. I quit when I when I started law school. Some of the kids that worked with me there were Grace Renna, Mary Rice, Wendy Winkle(?), a Dave, Eleanor, Terry, another Mary—that’s the best I can do. Every Tuesday night I put up the Marquee. It was an old fashioned marquee where the plastic letters were clipped to strips along a lit white background. It is the same one in the photo above. I remember a real estate office next door and a huge bowling alley down the block. I watched Nixon resign on a TV over the bar in that bowling alley. So long ago…