GenX Adulting Podcast (00:16)
Welcome to GenX Adulting and today we have author David Latour with us. Welcome David.

David La Torre (00:21)
Hi, good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it is. I've been traveling, so I've kind of lost track of everything. So it's great to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

GenX Adulting Podcast (00:23)
you

Yeah.

We're so happy to have you. And ⁓ it's funny you say that because this is like end of school year for us with our youngest and I've lost track of time. I he's already acting like it's summer and I'm thinking, No, you still are in school. We're losing control of the situation.

David La Torre (00:37)
Right, Us too, yeah.

By the way,

didn't school just start? And last week, I realized I look at the calendar and there's two weeks left of school here where I live in central Pennsylvania. I'm like, my goodness, it just flies.

GenX Adulting Podcast (00:58)
Yeah, it goes.

Now up there, you guys are done in two weeks as well, because we're in Florida and we're Georgia's the first out of the whole country. And then we're next. And I always thought because we lived in Jersey for a while. Brian's from Jersey. Our kids didn't get out in Jersey or older to until like mid June. Yeah.

David La Torre (01:03)
yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, two more weeks. I don't know what the deal is. ⁓ We go, I can tell you what the deal is. We go earlier now. mean, school started for our kids. I want to say like August 15th. So the idea being earlier start, earlier out for the school year and for the summer. So it's changed a little bit. mean, remember when, by the way, I love the title of your podcast because Gen X is such a part of my life, obviously.

GenX Adulting Podcast (01:33)
Mm-hmm. Is that?

David La Torre (01:45)
I miss the days where the first day of school was a day after Labor Day. It was great. That Labor Day weekend was fantastic. You blew it out, you know, as a kid.

GenX Adulting Podcast (01:48)
Yep. Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely. I grew up in Oregon and both Jersey and Oregon was the day after Labor Day. And I felt like you got the whole summer. And then we moved here. And although they get out at the end of May, they start August 10th. And even though we get the full month of June and the full month of July, it still feels like you're not getting the whole summer. You know?

David La Torre (02:00)
Right?

I agree with you, I agree.

August, all of sudden you're like, it's literally back to school. August 1st, it's always like, we got a month left. We got five weeks, but not anymore.

GenX Adulting Podcast (02:23)
Yes.

You could still do vacation. Now is that statewide in Pennsylvania? Did they change it across the board?

David La Torre (02:31)
listen, Pennsylvania doesn't do anything easy. There's 500 school districts here. Okay. And none of them agree on anything. So the only thing that is mandated in Pennsylvania is I believe there has to be 180 learning days. And even that can be virtual now since, since COVID districts have discovered we can actually do virtual days. Like two weeks ago, we had a virtual day because there was some in-service thing going on with teachers. So.

GenX Adulting Podcast (02:46)
Yes.

David La Torre (03:00)
That's really the only mandate we have. As far as starting and ending, that's up to each school district. Yeah, it's crazy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (03:05)
What a trip. Wow. Because it's across

the board here and you think Florida would be more wild. we go by county. We do. Pretty much everyone starts around August. it's not no one's like we're going to do after Labor Day and there's no such thing as virtual dates in Florida. There's none of that.

David La Torre (03:12)
Yeah, you.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Lucky you. mean, that's I'm

not I'm not a big believer in having a virtual day because something has to happen at school. You know, I mean, the kids should be there. I don't have any problems with the virtual model of learning period, but that's not what we signed up for.

GenX Adulting Podcast (03:38)
Yeah, I agree. Down here in Florida, if there's something like that, they just give them the day off. They're like, whatever, that counts as a day off. So, OK, well, to get back to you, our first question is always, what year were you born?

David La Torre (03:43)
Right, right.

Thanks.

1970. Yes, proudly Gen X, the last generation born before the internet.

GenX Adulting Podcast (03:52)
Okay, so you're Gen X. You're right in the heart of it, right in the heart of Gen X.

Yes. Yeah. we were we experienced many last and so many firsts and we're the only generation I think that has gone through this unique experience of, you know, all of it, all of it. It's such a trip. Where were you born?

David La Torre (04:03)
I

Right?

Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Harrisburg. I didn't try it, but I ended up, I live in Camp Hill and I'm sitting right here in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania right now.

GenX Adulting Podcast (04:21)
Yep.

Okay, so you're near Hershey Park.

David La Torre (04:30)
I am way too close to Hershey Park. ⁓ Yeah, are seasoned. We we our daughter has seasoned a season pass to Hershey Park, so she probably goes a half dozen times. I have a older son who's 26. ⁓ I remarried ⁓ and he had a season. I had a season pass with him. We used to go all the time. listen, I love Hershey Park, but I'm sort of Hershey Parked out. I'm sure.

GenX Adulting Podcast (04:33)
That's our favorite part. We love Hersey Park.

Of course, that's kind of us with Orlando, like we live two

and a half hours south of Orlando and like Disney and Universal is great, but not something that we're like, we need to go but I'll tell you something if we ever get a chance and over the years to go to Hershey Park for whatever reason, our whole family thinks as far as the coasters are the best. It's the cleanest park. It's the cleanest park. Smells good in the lodge too. Yeah.

David La Torre (05:05)
Right.

Right?

It is. is. And

yeah, it's so nice. You have so many great options to stay and you can do different things. You can branch out from Hershey if you want to take a day off in the park. There's all kinds of things. And but you're right, it's a it's a great community, Hershey. Everything is clean about it, too. I have to tell you about Orlando. I grew up a big Disney person, but I love Universal theme parks like I love those parks. I love.

GenX Adulting Podcast (05:37)
It is.

Yeah.

David La Torre (05:47)
I'm nerdy Harry Potter. My son got me into it. I love Harry Potter world. Like I just think universally. Everybody talks about Disney, but the first thing I think of now is universal and getting one of those super passes so you can go to the fun of every line of every ride.

GenX Adulting Podcast (06:00)
Yeah.

It's so funny you say that because we moved to Florida in 2007 and we are universal people. had universal animal annual passes. We I think we only went to Disney.

David La Torre (06:08)
right? Nice.

GenX Adulting Podcast (06:14)
three times and it was because our kids eighth grade graduation was there. had to. listen, you cannot beat, if you stay on site especially, you get a fast pass automatically if you stay on site. So Universal is one of the few parks where you just, you don't wait, you just do. You do the whole day. it is, Harry Potter World. Now have you been there and been able to do both of the Harry Potter World's Diagon Alley?

David La Torre (06:18)
Yeah! ⁓

Yeah. Yeah.

It's fantastic. Yep.

No, I haven't seen the second one yet, but that's cool. I'm kind of waiting to take, I go with my 26 year old because I'm going to see him dress up like a nerdy Harry Potter kid at age 26. I can't wait to see that. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (06:52)
Absolutely, absolutely.

And the train goes in between the two parks and the train is the whole Harry Potter experience too.

David La Torre (06:58)
I know, I remember seeing the train, they had it with the first park, I'm looking forward to seeing that whole connection, that's great.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:05)
It's awesome.

It's awesome. If you go just before I forget when you listen back to the episode, whenever you guys plan that trip, contact me. I have like secret local tricks to do there that other people don't know about to help you. And I don't want to give them up. I'm not giving them up.

David La Torre (07:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Consider it done. No,

no, consider it done. We will do it quietly.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:25)
Do think Hershey's gonna open? I hear they're having the labor dispute there.

David La Torre (07:31)
No, they'll be fine. Hershey Park's Hershey Park will open. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:34)
I didn't know that. Oh.

There's some issues.

David La Torre (07:38)
There's always

some rumblings at the beginning of the year and then they tend to settle down. Look, this could be wrong the year that I'm on a podcast and actually say, no, they'll open up, but they won't. Yeah, but they probably, they'll figure that out. No, really is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (07:46)
Yeah, right. We'll cut that.

I hope so. It's too much of a cash cow too for the community. It needs

to stay open. okay, so tell me again the name of the town you were born in.

David La Torre (08:02)
It's two words, camp, like it sounds in hill, camp hill.

GenX Adulting Podcast (08:06)
Camp Hill. So for Camp Hill, how many generations go back? Was that your grandparents settled there? Your great grandparents or your parents?

David La Torre (08:13)
⁓

My grandparents, ⁓ so my maternal grandparents in the Harrisburg area. ⁓ I was born in Camp Hill because we're Catholic and that's where the Catholic hospital was. So was born in Camp Hill, but we were residents of Harrisburg city. Moved up into Gen X suburbia in the mid 70s when people started moving out of cities, we moved up the river to a

GenX Adulting Podcast (08:22)
Okay.

Okay.

David La Torre (08:42)
an area called Dolphin or Middle Paxton Township. ⁓ But my grandparents, my maternal grandparents ⁓ made their way to Stilton, Pennsylvania, the old steel town, Stilton, Pennsylvania, lots of jobs there with the steel, with the steel boon in American history, obviously, in the industrial age. And they made their way there. My paternal grandparents, ⁓ my

grandfather died in World War II. He ⁓ served with the ⁓ Italian Air Force and when the Italians switched sides and aligned themselves with the Allies, Nazi Germany came over and pretty much split the country in two. My grandfather was captured and spent about a year and a half in labor camps and

before he was murdered March 31st, 1945 by Gestapo.

GenX Adulting Podcast (09:43)
Wow, do you know how old he was?

David La Torre (09:45)
He was 32 years old. ⁓ His death is he was one of 71 ⁓ Italian. They were not known as POWs. They were known as ⁓ military internees because Hitler wanted to avoid giving them Geneva, the rights of the Geneva Convention. So they technically weren't prisoners of war. They were this special classification. So they just basically made them work hard labor.

brutal hard labor. He survived for a year and a half. He died what was known as the Easter ⁓ Day Massacre of 1945. And that was in Kassel, Germany, coming home after a day of repairing train tracks from Allied bombs. And there was an abandoned rail car filled with food. And the townspeople in Kassel, the war was over at this point. It was just a matter of time, and they could hear the Allied guns in the background.

GenX Adulting Podcast (10:24)
Wow.

David La Torre (10:43)
getting closer and they encouraged the Italians to eat and They said the the Germans of the the Nazis have fled you go ahead and eat well the the Gestapo found out about it and showed up and Any Italian that had food on them was marched out to bomb craters and shot in the back of the head And the guy who was in charge of it a monster by the name of Franz Marmon got

GenX Adulting Podcast (11:05)
That's crazy.

Okay.

David La Torre (11:13)
⁓ Was tried after the war and got two years time served and released And he he murdered emerged 70 at times. My grandfather almost made it to the end of the war. In fact, my grandmother cut a letter ⁓ Three months after he died from the Red Cross because you know records are so difficult back then saying that your husband has been released and will be and will be returning and

GenX Adulting Podcast (11:17)
Jeez.

⁓ my

god.

David La Torre (11:41)
She

didn't find out for well over a year that he had died. then she came to America, to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area where we already had relatives.

GenX Adulting Podcast (11:50)
Okay, wait, so ⁓ where was she? You're saying she came to America then?

David La Torre (11:54)
She was in

Southern Italy in Calabria, a town called San Pietro in Guarano, Italy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:03)
Were they both Italian?

David La Torre (12:05)
Well, the complicated part of the story is my maternal grandmother was born in Halifax, Pennsylvania, one of nine children to Aldo Magnelli ⁓ with Italian relatives, his brother and sister that lived in Italy. And back then they were farmers and could not afford to take care of all their children. The relatives in Italy offered to take the two youngest daughters, one of which was my grandmother. So my grandmother was an American citizen.

emigrated to Italy when she was a child, married my grandfather, and then after World War II when she found out he died, came back to America because she had family in the Harrisburg area.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:45)
Okay, that makes sense. So your grandfather was Italian.

David La Torre (12:47)
He was absolutely full-blooded Italian, in ⁓ Calabria, the region of Calabria, Italy, which I will be going to this summer to retrace my family's past. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (12:59)
That's very cool, very cool. how

old was she when she found out he had died?

David La Torre (13:05)
So he was 32. I believe she was 25, I want to say, at the time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (13:11)
had they gotten married like basically right before he left for the war.

David La Torre (13:13)
Yeah.

No, they had three children. had my aunt Anna Maria, who is still alive at age 88, my aunt Teresa, who is two years younger than her, and my father, who is four years younger than my oldest aunt, who I'm still very close with.

GenX Adulting Podcast (13:32)
So when she came over here, she brought her children, assume, your father and your two aunts.

David La Torre (13:37)
The

interesting thing is she had to come back before my aunt and Maria turned 13 or she would have lost by by relation. She would have lost her American citizenship. So my father and my two aunts were born with American citizenship because my grandmother was born in America. So they had to get back by a certain date. Now, my father, my father had to wait a number of years because even though he was eight years old at the end of the I'm sorry, he was.

Four years old at the end of the war, this is, he's about six or seven right now. He had to, at this point, he had to wait a couple of years because he was a male. He was considered an enemy combatant. So he, so my father, so my mother had, my grandmother had to leave, took the two daughters with her. ⁓ My father stayed with ⁓ relatives. And when he was 11 years old, they put him on the Andrea Doria, which would later

GenX Adulting Podcast (14:16)
Really?

David La Torre (14:34)
sink. He put him on the Andrea Doria and sailed him across to America by himself.

GenX Adulting Podcast (14:40)
So that was what five years without his mother.

David La Torre (14:43)
About,

yeah, which is very sort of common back then in World War II. And I remember my aunt telling me a story that they went for a summer. She went with her aunt to a summer retreat during the war and the rail system got destroyed. They're connected where she lived to where they went.

And for three years, she was stuck in that area and could not get home and could not contact her family because the mail traveled on the rail system. So back then, you know, going a year or two years, even three during a time of war was not uncommon.

GenX Adulting Podcast (15:26)
It's impossible for all of us to our heads around that, right? Oh, Yeah. Could you even? And I can't imagine what your grandmother went through having to leave him, too. You know, but she had been through all this trauma, right? So when you go through so much trauma, you kind of go into autopilot, you disassociate all that stuff. So I'm sure she was doing a lot of that. But still, she had to leave her son.

David La Torre (15:30)
Right, especially in this age with a phone. you could just, I could text my son right now and be like, Hey dad, what's going on? I they didn't talk for years.

Right.

It's funny you say that because anytime anybody ever asked her about our grandfather, she's very short about it. Didn't want to talk about it. She never looked at another man, never went out on a date, came to America. I mean, forget about getting remarried, never dated, never. She mourned for the rest of her life until she died in 1982.

GenX Adulting Podcast (16:14)
sounds like she was just utterly traumatized and heartbroken from the whole thing.

David La Torre (16:17)
She really,

yeah, she really, she really, really was. ⁓ And for years, we did not know where my grandfather died and we did not know where he was buried. And then last year I started doing all the stuff on Ancestry.com. It's trying to figure things out. I said, you know what, I'm really not good at this. There's only so far you can go on websites like that. And then I hired their...

GenX Adulting Podcast (16:38)
That's it.

David La Torre (16:41)
I recommend this to anybody. ⁓ I hired their special unit called Ancestry Pro Genealogists. I wanted my father's history researched. I have a lot of it on my mother's side. West Virginia, Virginia, stuff like that, end up in Stilton, Pennsylvania. And they found, not only did they find my grandfather, but they found his tombstone and it had been on a website ⁓ recognizing the Easter Massacre of 1945.

GenX Adulting Podcast (17:10)
Wow.

David La Torre (17:11)
And

there was a whole website dedicated to it. And there's my grandfather's tombstone. And none of us knew this. And I immediately went over to my cousins where my aunt lives ⁓ and showed her a picture of her father's tombstone. And then ⁓ I'll try not to get emotional about it. Last July, we found him in Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany, in a ⁓ Italian military cemetery.

in Frankfurt, Germany. I went and visited him last July and FaceTime. Talk about not being able to talk with people for years. I FaceTime my whole family from the cemetery and I showed my aunt, his oldest daughter, her father's tombstone. we didn't know for 80 years, we did not know where he was. We kind of heard it was

GenX Adulting Podcast (17:59)
Wow. Wow.

David La Torre (18:08)
It was very hard to decipher. We could not get records, but the internet has really opened up so many, as bad as the internet can be, it can be really wonderful too. And so we finally had the Italian government recognize his service. They had never recognized it, acknowledged his role as a international military internee ⁓ and the sacrifice he made for his country. See, the thing you have to understand about IMI is

When the Nazis took over, and I know we're way off on a tangent here, when the Nazis took over Italy, gotcha, you had a choice in the Italian military, pledge loyalty to the Nazis or go to a prison camp, or maybe be executed or go to a prison camp. And 600,000 Italians chose labor or death over ⁓ swearing allegiance to Hitler.

GenX Adulting Podcast (18:40)
No, no, no, no, you're good. you... Yeah, keep going.

David La Torre (19:05)
They hated Mussolini, he was still there, he was a puppet. So many Italians that fought in that war for the Axis fought under, basically fought under threat, fought under duress, their families were back home. And my grandfather refused and he died for it. And he was just awarded, they created a special medal in 2008, I found out.

GenX Adulting Podcast (19:18)
survival.

David La Torre (19:31)
called basically the Medal of Honor, far different than the American Medal of Honor, which is the highest form of reverence for, and rightly so for, American military. But they created a Medal of Honor for the IMI to acknowledge their sacrifice. And he was just ⁓ approved in February. And we hope in September we'll be able to collect his medal. They say

kind of sketchy like the nearest embassy or consulate. Well, the nearest consulate to us is Philadelphia and I've emailed and I haven't heard back yet, but at some point we'll figure this thing out. It's my hope we can get it in Philadelphia because I want to take my aunt. I want her to be there. I want them to hand her her father's medal.

GenX Adulting Podcast (20:10)
Yes.

Absolutely. mean, I can't imagine the closure you gave her when you showed her his ⁓ tombstone there. She finally knew where her dad was.

David La Torre (20:22)
Yeah.

It's just

crazy to think about that, right? And my biggest regret is that my Aunt Teresa wasn't alive to see it. And I didn't do it then and I could have. Like I regret that. mean, look, it doesn't keep me up at night, but I just regret that my Aunt Teresa did not get to see that because she was always so interested in where he was. you know, it just popped in.

GenX Adulting Podcast (20:44)
Right.

It's what

David La Torre (20:57)
popped in

GenX Adulting Podcast (20:57)
it's.

David La Torre (20:57)
my head one day, like I wanted to find out about my family and then it became a search for my grandfather. It didn't start out that way.

GenX Adulting Podcast (21:05)
Yeah, but it's one of those

things where it's one of those moments in life where you didn't you couldn't predict how poignant and meaningful it was until the moment happened. You didn't know what you were going for until you were there.

David La Torre (21:14)
Well said.

I just thought I was trying to trace my family history. I found a lot of information. ⁓ And so this summer I'm going to visit the house where my grandmother and my two aunts and my father lived while they waited for my grandfather to come home. And my aunt told me the story about the last time he was home and spent a weekend with them. And he walked up toward the train station and

GenX Adulting Podcast (21:21)
Exactly, exactly.

David La Torre (21:46)
and they were all up on the balcony waving and screaming to him and he turned around and waved to them and then he turned turned back around and walked away and they never saw him again. And for two years, almost every day, my aunt Anna Maria went to the train station to see if he was home.

GenX Adulting Podcast (22:04)
It's just it's such a different Life it's a life that none of us can even imagine just that That there's no security. There's everything is unpredictable. It's based in trauma And there's no foundation to stand on and you're just waiting waiting waiting for your life to be able to start again And then when he dies it never started again. So you're just left with that emptiness. she was a kid, too Yeah, so it's just

David La Torre (22:25)
It's in fact. Right.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (22:33)
to have that unsettled feeling. Like again, when you showed your aunt where he's buried, there's probably a part inside of her that emptiness that finally was settled. She could finally find peace there. It was such a-

David La Torre (22:44)
right?

It was

really big moment. were able to get his... I was able to... I've written so many letters electronically and again, the internet made it so much easier now. I was able to get his full military record, which we never had. ⁓ We've applied for medals. Finally got the country to send a certificate acknowledging his service and sacrifice and now the medal. I hope with the medal, I hope I can put that in my aunt's hands and then I think that closes the chapter.

GenX Adulting Podcast (23:16)
Yeah, that's a wonderful thing. hope What a nice gift for her, geez. Yeah, no, it's amazing. Absolutely amazing.

David La Torre (23:21)
Yeah.

She's very thick, speaks very thick Italian and she go, okay, okay, but you keep, you keep the medal, you keep, you're the oldest, oldest grandson of my brothers, my brothers being my father. You're the son of the boy, so you should keep the medal. I'm like, Anna Maria, you can hold onto the medal, I'll get it someday.

GenX Adulting Podcast (23:28)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, hopefully

that becomes a problem, right? You've got that metal and poured it out. problem. That's a good problem. Okay, so that's your father's history. What about your mother's side? They basically was at work in the steel industry?

David La Torre (23:52)
Yeah, it's a great problem.

Yes.

So,

so they do, I'm three quarter Italian. So my grandfather, my maternal grandfather was born in America, first generation. His parents came from Italy. Okay. So his parents came from Italy. In fact, my paternal grandmother, ⁓ paternal grandfather,

and maternal grandfather's family all lived within 20 miles from each other in the Calabria region and never knew each other. And they all end up in the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area ⁓ where ⁓ my. ⁓ So they were the Falcons, so my name's Latour. ⁓ My mother's maiden name was Falcom. My maternal grandmother's.

GenX Adulting Podcast (24:39)
That's crazy.

David La Torre (25:01)
family, if I'm explaining all this right, they came long time from America. They came from the South. The next name in the family line there is lighter. And so they were in Virginia and West Virginia made their way toward the Stilton area. And that is where my grandfather, who was born in 1913 in America, first generation. He met my grandmother in Stilton and they married during World War II.

And ⁓ they couldn't go on a honeymoon because of the war, but they spent their honeymoon weekend at the Hotel Hershey. It really does.

GenX Adulting Podcast (25:38)
⁓ there you go. all comes back to Hershey. ⁓

So then do you know how your parents met?

David La Torre (25:47)
Yeah, ⁓ I'm laughing because it was a summer party in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and my mother was under curfew from my grandparents. She had to get back to Stilton. She had to be home by 10 a.m. She had her sweater in a closet. She opened the closet and there's a boy in the closet making out with a girl. He hands her the sweater and that was my father.

GenX Adulting Podcast (26:14)
It's quite an impression.

David La Torre (26:15)
Yeah.

And then like a couple of weeks later, they were all at a drive-in restaurant, kind of like a la happy days. You drive up with your car and it was a really big thing here back in the day in Harrisburg called a barbecue cottage. They serve barbecue sandwiches. And they met and they saw each other and said hi. And pretty much what I'm told is we're inseparable since from that point on.

GenX Adulting Podcast (26:44)
Do know how old they were?

David La Torre (26:46)
That would have been... My dad would have been about 25 and my mother 21. They ended up marrying in 1968. So another couple years they would get married, 1968. My father was 26 because when I was born, I always remember him saying he was 28 when I was born. So he was 28.

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:13)
Okay.

David La Torre (27:15)
My was about 24 and a half when I was born in 1907.

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:18)
What did your dad, did they both work?

David La Torre (27:22)
⁓ My mother went straight to work out of high school back in those days. It was very common to not go to college ⁓ in central Pennsylvania coming from a steel town like that. The family just didn't have enough money to send kids to college. So he went to work. My grandfather, or my father, ⁓ he was spoiled. ⁓ He was spoiled by my grandmother. think she had just felt so guilty that he didn't grow up with a father.

And my aunt's, his older sister spoiled him. That's a very cultural thing I found, at least with my Italian family, or the sons get spoiled. The sons get spoiled, especially if something has happened. You know, so I think my grandmother, my Nanny, always felt guilty about him not having his father. So whatever he won, he got, he didn't have to work. He drove an MG around. He convinced my aunt and aunt Marie to buy an MG and then he drove it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (27:59)
Yeah.

David La Torre (28:20)
Um, and you know, I studied, he's kind of like a spoiled kid and I ended up getting an associate's degree from York college, a bachelor's degree from Salem college in West Virginia. Uh, their, um, wedding announcement said that he was in a management level, uh, he was a management level trainee for, can't remember the company, but what I remember early on is that he sold business forms, which I found very fascinating.

GenX Adulting Podcast (28:22)
That's awesome.

David La Torre (28:49)
This is pre-computer. So you can design anything you want online now with any sort of program and you print it out. Well, back then you design forms by hand. You had a ruler and you had special paper and he would design receipts and invoices. And then you go out and you try and get clients who need these things. And he was really good at it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (28:51)
Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (29:19)
One of my memories of childhood was that he had these, were called Chairman's Club, ⁓ Steins on his bedroom, ⁓ dresser, Chairman's Club, which means you achieve a certain high level in sales. He usually came with like a trip to Boca Raton or something like that for you and your wife for three days. And, so he was very good at it. He was very good salesman. My father had.

GenX Adulting Podcast (29:36)
Yeah.

David La Torre (29:49)
My father is probably the smartest person I've ever known and I'd like to think I've known of quite a few smarter people in my day. ⁓ But he was, but he always wanted to be his own boss and it would ultimately, I think, become his undoing in life.

GenX Adulting Podcast (30:04)
I'm assuming he was very charismatic.

David La Torre (30:07)
extremely charismatic. But he kind of let himself go once I was born, if that makes sense. know, extremely good looking dude growing up. Very, very prep before there was ever really a prep sort of designation. Driving that MG around with my mother who was beautiful. You know, they were a couple for sure. They were...

a to-be-seen couple. But then after I was born, think the waist size started to increase and the hair started to thin out a little bit. But my dad was always very charismatic. He'd pick up a phone and talk to anybody and convince them of anything.

GenX Adulting Podcast (30:50)
What did your mom do? You said she worked. What did she do?

David La Torre (30:52)
different jobs, ⁓ receptionists at the state's seat of state governments here. So it's sort of things like that. nothing ⁓ really career focused per se. Like I want to be this or that. She just got a job and worked hard.

GenX Adulting Podcast (31:10)
Is there a large Italian community in Harrisburg?

David La Torre (31:14)
we keep coming back to this mostly Hershey Hershey, very large Italian community in Hershey, but we, we had, we have a good side. We had, had a good number of Italians here in Harrisburg and still do.

GenX Adulting Podcast (31:17)
Okay.

What was the draw originally? Was it working for Hershey or the steel mills?

David La Torre (31:33)
Well, I think it was both, ⁓ quite frankly, but more the steel mill than anything. Stilton has produced countless judges, ⁓ elected officials. mean, everybody who's ever come out of central Pennsylvania politics can trace their lineage back to Stilton because it was such a diverse community of so many, so many ⁓ countries, so many people with different

GenX Adulting Podcast (32:01)
Yeah.

David La Torre (32:01)
nationalities

would come to Steele and work in that steel mill. Ironically, my grandfather never worked in a steel mill who was born in Steele and he was a mechanic by trade. So actually never worked in the steel mill, my grandmothers, all my grandmother's brothers worked in the steel mill. My grandfather's brothers all worked in a steel mill. He was the only one that did not.

GenX Adulting Podcast (32:11)
Mm.

When your grandmother came over here from Italy with your two aunts and you said it was because there was family. ⁓ So she had the American side of her family was still living in that area. That's why.

David La Torre (32:36)
The Magnelli's,

yeah, plenty of them here. And she worked as a seamstress her entire life. She developed her own business. ⁓ Some of my earliest memories growing up when we would have to stay at her apartment during the day because parents are working and back then there wasn't, you stayed with family, that's just the way it was. ⁓ People coming in and out all day for alterations, all day long. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (32:42)
I was going to ask you, what did she do?

Yeah.

Okay.

David La Torre (33:05)
And I can still see her in her little ⁓ room in the back, somebody standing up on a box while she's ⁓ adjusting where the hemline should be and how to shorten a jacket. I can still see all those things. And then watching her pound away on the sewing machine.

GenX Adulting Podcast (33:24)
No, she probably worked so hard when she came over here. Yeah. Yeah. And you said she didn't date. She didn't remarry like she had one focus working and raising those three kids. That's that's really impressive.

David La Torre (33:28)
She raised three kids all by herself. As far as I know, never remarried, nope, that was it. And my

aunts did what you did back then too, is they got state jobs and they worked those state jobs for 35, 40 years. And back then when you retired, retired with full medical benefits.

GenX Adulting Podcast (33:54)
Yeah.

David La Torre (33:56)
no pay nothing, no copays anything. And that's what you aspired to do ⁓ back in those days. And they certainly did that and everybody lived good lives.

GenX Adulting Podcast (34:09)
Well, listen, now those jobs would be gold. If anyone could land a job where you get a pension or anything, medical benefits, like there was a time that might have been looked at like, that's so boring. You're just doing an office job. What are you doing wasting your life for? Like, ⁓ this is actually the goal that nobody realized until they were gone. Probably the best gig in town in Harrisburg. There's not a whole lot around there. Yeah.

David La Torre (34:13)
Right.

Right.

Right? Right?

There's no question those were

very, very plumb gigs with the and honestly, their retirement packages and health benefits in state government are still very, very good. Very, very good. mean, yeah, I mean, look, they're union jobs. And especially when you have Democratic governors in office, they take care of you really

GenX Adulting Podcast (34:44)
Yeah, yeah, government for sure.

Yeah, absolutely. So your parents get married and are you the oldest?

David La Torre (34:58)
Yes,

I'm the oldest. have a sister who's three and a half years younger than me. She lives in the Chicago area.

GenX Adulting Podcast (35:07)
Okay, so still Gen X. She's Gen X too. Okay. So you're born and your dad's working. Did your mom become a stay at home mom after you were born?

David La Torre (35:10)
She's very Gen X. Yeah, we're proud of our Gen X lineage.

For

the most part, yeah. And ⁓ we lived in upper side of the city of Harrisburg in an area called Allison Hill. And I could still see that red brick two story house with a small yard. And I do buy it not too long ago. And there was a defense that my grandfather had installed so I could play in the yard. And they were worried about me getting hit by car.

GenX Adulting Podcast (35:29)
Okay.

David La Torre (35:49)
And that fence is still there. Yeah. And then we moved up to Dauphin when I was four years old and Stella is my daughter. ⁓ Caroline, my younger sister, ⁓ she was just a little over one.

GenX Adulting Podcast (35:50)
That is so cool.

Okay, and then did you guys stay in that area pretty much through your childhood?

David La Torre (36:11)
through until I left for college.

GenX Adulting Podcast (36:13)
So growing up in dolphin, because you said that you when your parents were working or when your mom or your dad was working, ⁓ you would go to your grandmother's. So did you not have that typical Gen X latch key kid experience because you had the family around?

David La Torre (36:24)
Right?

no, we had lots of that. ⁓ I could still hear my mother yelling my name, it's time to come home because the one light we had in the street went on. ⁓ You left the house during the day if your chores were done and they didn't see us until nighttime unless we came home for lunch and she yelled for us when it was time for dinner. It was very latchkey.

GenX Adulting Podcast (36:31)
Okay.

Okay.

David La Torre (36:55)
In

fact, in fact, I would argue that my parents were way too latchkey as it would turn out. And as we go on in life, I became more the adult in the house than anything.

GenX Adulting Podcast (37:12)
Okay, so they were definitely the commercial of it's 10 o'clock, so you know where your children are, parents. ⁓ Did you kind of have a group that you would bike around with, like a group of friends, a little gang?

David La Torre (37:18)
So true. Yes.

Yeah, just like

everybody else, ⁓ everybody had a Huffy bike, you know, with a big pad. The banana seats were gone. They were out. Some kids still had them. But like if there was no way in hell I was getting one of those, you know, they had just come out with a so-called Huffy dirt bike and it had just sort of like an around sort of like a round pad as a seat black pad. And, you know, I had like the little

GenX Adulting Podcast (37:28)
Yeah, so true.

you

David La Torre (37:51)
Number plate like it was a motorcycle, you know that that sort of cheesy stuff And yeah, you just drove you rode your bike around all day long. You played war You know you played football Anything you could just to kind of pass the time for the day and you know, this summers used to go so slow but Go to this we'd go to the dolphin pool, but talk about latch key. So I'm like six or seven years old and

GenX Adulting Podcast (38:01)
Yeah.

David La Torre (38:19)
my sister's three and we would go to the pool by ourselves on a, I want to say, now I'm going to say kind of like a ride a bike by then. So it was like, it was like five and nine. me backstep five and nine. Like we ride our bikes a mile to the pool, cross a busy road and go to the pool and, uh, by ourselves. But one day I get a, one day I hear Dave Latour, please come to the office. Please come to the office. Usually you're in trouble. And like, uh, some

GenX Adulting Podcast (38:38)
Thank

David La Torre (38:49)
running up to the pool office and everybody's making fun of me because everybody thinks I'm in trouble. I think I'm in trouble. I have no idea what I did. And the pool manager comes over and introduce himself. goes, where's your mother or father? And I'm like, my dad's working and my mom's at home. And ⁓ he goes, well, what's your home phone number?

GenX Adulting Podcast (38:55)
Yeah.

David La Torre (39:14)
I said, why? He said, I'm going to call your mother. You guys shouldn't be here at this age. And I go, I don't think you want to call my mom. And he goes, young man, I'm going to be calling your mom. What's your phone number? That was the phone number. Hi, Mrs. Latorre. This is John. I can't remember his name. ⁓ I'd to know, your kids are here at the pool by themselves. Are you coming down to the pool?

And I hear he's nodding his okay, he goes, well, we really can't have them here by themselves. It's really it's against our rules and it's not appropriate. And then I just see him hold the phone away from his ear and I can hear my mother screaming at him. And he just looks over at me, I go. I go, I'm sorry, and he goes, you don't have to be sorry. I go, no, I'm sorry. She's always like this when she has her period.

GenX Adulting Podcast (39:52)
Okay.

my gosh. ⁓

David La Torre (40:11)
And

he was drinking a soda and had ice in his mouth and spit the ice across the room when I said that. I was a little kid. I didn't know. I didn't know, you know, like I, you know, and, and my mom, look, we have a lot of, I've got a lot of trauma from childhood and those times of the month were really bad for us. It was really bad. And I remember being happy. was at the pool because I knew she was home and she was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (40:16)
my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

David La Torre (40:41)
She was just crazy, for lack of better term.

GenX Adulting Podcast (40:45)
How did you

know she was on her period? Did she tell you guys?

David La Torre (40:49)
she would

always scream about being on her period. It was her period and you start to match things up. you know, back then you took a nerve pill for everything. ⁓ know, is Burt Reynolds movie where he he's afraid of commitment. I can't think of the name right now. And Charles Charles Durning, I think, played his brother and

GenX Adulting Podcast (40:52)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know what you're talking about. I told you either.

David La Torre (41:17)
Burt Reynolds is having a panic attack because they're looking at buying mattresses with his girlfriend. And Charles Durning turns around, there's a crowd watching and they're all holding ⁓ big brown bags. Remember it was called big brown bag. And they're all holding his, yeah. Yeah, and he goes, does anybody have a Valium? And they all reach in their bags and pull out bottles of pills.

GenX Adulting Podcast (41:35)
Yes. Bloomingdeals. Bloomingdeals is bring big brown bag. Yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

David La Torre (41:48)
And so like, that's just how it was back then. she would have really bad ⁓ monthly cycles and she would be taking pills to deal with it. And it just, it made her flip out. Like it was a scary time at the house for us. Really, really scary time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (42:06)
Yeah, because

back then there was no discussion about premenstrual syndrome and now there's even it's like PM something D. It's like even more severe where you actually women experience ⁓ actual clinical depression during that month like heart.

David La Torre (42:11)
Right.

Oh, I would come home from

school and I would never know what mother I was getting. And my father's out working, he's a salesman, you know, but you're just praying that he comes home, that he comes home. Because you didn't know what you're going to get. And if I stepped out of line, just in the slightest way, accidentally, when I got home, she just laid into us, man. And sometimes it would get violent.

GenX Adulting Podcast (42:27)
Yeah.

So was it just during that time of the month for her?

David La Torre (42:52)
It's really hard to say because I was young, honestly. If I told you yes, I don't know that I'm being truthful because it all blends together after all these years. You just remember so many bad moments. My mother was a kind soul, but very troubled. And she fed those issues with drugs and alcohol.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:07)
So we should.

David La Torre (43:21)
and would eventually become a pill addict, an alcoholic, and a hard drug user.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:29)
Do you think she started self-medicating even before you and your sister were born or was it?

David La Torre (43:35)
without

question, without question. was not. And back then, too, pills were all about weight loss because it was a different kind of time. And my grandmother, again, another lovely person, had no problems telling my mother she was putting on weight. You're putting on weight. You look fat. I can still hear it. You look fat. And what that must do to a person. And my mother was so impressionable.

GenX Adulting Podcast (43:42)
Yes.

Right.

⁓ yes.

David La Torre (44:03)
and so intimidated by her parents, like, which is a mother, that's a mother I knew. I would come to find out that my mother was actually pretty crafty growing up with steel cigarettes and hide them and smoke them with her friends and actually ⁓ put on weight after her and my father got engaged, but not a lot, but enough that it made her wedding dress too tight to adjust. And she convinced my grandmother that she had not bought the dress and my grandmother went down with her to the store.

GenX Adulting Podcast (44:26)
Mm.

David La Torre (44:33)
and bought her a second wedding dress. My grandmother never found out that she paid for two wedding dresses. Because that's how crafty my mother was. But I didn't know that mom. I didn't know that. The mom I knew was very weak and frail. And I think the drugs had started to take hold of her, not the alcohol yet. So she's taken drugs to lose weight. She's taken Valium and Quaaludes. And I remember Quaaludes.

GenX Adulting Podcast (44:39)
Wow.

David La Torre (45:02)
you know which has now been outlawed ⁓ think of the stuff we used to put in our bodies back then ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (45:09)
yeah. yeah.

But this was during, I'm picturing what, early mid sixties when she was going through this, right?

David La Torre (45:17)
No, I was born in 1970.

GenX Adulting Podcast (45:19)
But before you guys were born, so this was in the early 70s, mid 60s. Yeah, when she was doing the diet pills and she was doing the before. Yeah, okay. so... have a question real quick. Okay. The part of Harrisburg you lived in is kind of on the city grid. So if there's chaos going on, the neighbors heard and...

David La Torre (45:21)
Yeah, that would be mid 60s, mid to late 60s. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yes,

everybody would hear everything. But in all honesty, for me, I don't remember a lot from when we lived in the city because we moved when I was four. I just remember driving my big wheel up and up the street to stop at my Italian grandmother's who lived at the end of the block to get little Pizzetta Italian cookies that she would make. remember. Dauphin was I didn't understand the day we moved to Dauphin.

GenX Adulting Podcast (45:56)
So it's a little more rural then. Was dolphin more rural?

David La Torre (46:04)
didn't understand why I couldn't have a big wheel. They're like, you won't need it anymore. We don't have sidewalks where we're going. And I didn't understand that. And then when we got there, I thought, this is the greatest thing ever. was like three quarters of an acre, a rancher house, one level rancher house, three bedrooms, two full baths. And I thought, this is the greatest thing ever. And I can run forever in this yard. had a chanel and we've just raced around the house.

GenX Adulting Podcast (46:09)
Yeah.

Well, it makes sense the Huffy bike too, right? You could just ride that everywhere. do you think, have you been able to pinpoint or do you have any idea as to did something happen in her childhood that would have where her demons rooted that would have caused or do you think this truly just started with diet pills?

David La Torre (46:31)
Rowe, you just bike everywhere. Yeah.

Right.

I think it really started with diet pills and then it all just sort of exploded when she's home by herself as a mother. And I think she probably had postpartum depression, we sort of speculate, that was never treated. ⁓ And I think things just sort of spiraled for her and it was a perfect concoction of ⁓ madness when you think about it because

My father was a pot smoker, so they smoked pot a lot. ⁓ In fact, there isn't a moment in my childhood where I don't remember pot or the smell of pot. And, ⁓ you know, in those early days that I, I remember being five or six going to being allowed to stay at a Friday night party, my parents would host at the house. And ⁓ my mother's like, you're going to stay, you're going to. ⁓

gonna stay tonight. ⁓ Your sister's going to your grandparents, but you're gonna stay because a friend of ours, I didn't know his name, Jay is gonna come and cut your hair. He cuts hair and he's gonna cut your hair tonight. So I'm sitting in this party through wet hair, stranded down, you know, and he's cutting my hair. I've got that sort of mop top 70s thing going and he's cutting through and I'm watching this party. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (48:13)
Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (48:20)
And that's when I first started. I first of all, felt like it was really cool that I was there. I was the only kid there and I had to, I had to be a big kid to be there. And I'm watching everybody laugh and have fun. Uh, I eventually learned how to play backgammon that night. Uh, such a seventies board game, you know, backgammon taught me how to play backgammon that night. I'm watching, uh, my dad roll joints. So I didn't know what they were at the time.

⁓ Then I watched them put what looked like sugar on a table and snort it through a straw and That's when I started going this is just looks like so much fun Like this is awesome and everybody's happy and they're blowing steam blowing off steam drinking low and brow drinking st. Pauli girl beers and old Heineken, you know ⁓ green cans I'm sorry green bottles and I'm just thinking this is just really cool. My parents have the nicest friends

and not wanting to go to bed that night. But yeah, but then that was kind of like the beginning of, ⁓ know, my parents really kind of falling off a cliff, so to speak.

GenX Adulting Podcast (49:23)
Of course not.

Would they host these parties on the weekends, or would they do it on school nights?

David La Torre (49:36)
Yes,

always, mostly Fridays. They'd have a Friday party and our driveway would be filled.

GenX Adulting Podcast (49:41)
Okay.

Because when you were talking about ⁓ your mom kind of spiraling and she was home, you know, endorphin in a rural area, she'd moved from a more urban area. And I was picturing maybe she didn't have friends. didn't have anyone to talk to. She didn't have girlfriends or whatever to, you know, but she had these party friends. But that's one type of relationship. she probably didn't have maybe female friends that she could connect with.

David La Torre (50:01)
That's part of it.

Mm-hmm.

She would

have ⁓ friends come from outside of Dauphin and some relatives come. ⁓ I had started school when was in kindergarten, but my sister would tell me years later, yeah, Mom would have such and such and such and such over who I knew. And they would make her stay in her room and they would smoke pot all afternoon.

GenX Adulting Podcast (50:35)
Okay, so even then there were still substances involved. So I have a feeling you're probably dead on about the postpartum depression because it sounds like her cycle also triggered severe depression. And back then that was not acknowledged for women in any way, shape or form.

David La Torre (50:39)
yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It wasn't,

it wasn't. And if you complain, you're just being a pain in the ass and just, hey, hey, listen. And I don't know that my father ever had this conversation. I'm speaking about society in general. Hey, I'm working all day and all you have to do is stay home. You know, we've, we've grown in this country to realize the hardest job there is, is to be a stay at home parent. It's the hardest job there is. don't care what anybody says. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (50:58)
Yeah, there was no space for it.

David La Torre (51:19)
Maybe outside of school teachers, I don't know how they do it with 20 kids, like 20, 25 kids. I mean, I can't, I've got two kids 12 years apart and both of them were very challenging. So in a good way, like no complaints, I've got great kids. I hope they agree. I hope they say the same thing about me. But back then it was just shut up. Shut up. What do you need? You're home all day. You get to watch your soaps all day.

GenX Adulting Podcast (51:22)
Yeah.

of course.

Yep. Yep.

David La Torre (51:49)
I can imagine there was a lot of loneliness back then, a lot of frustration, a lot of why do I feel this way? ⁓ And just, it's sad.

GenX Adulting Podcast (51:59)
No, it is. feeling crazy. Women were called crazy left and right for anything, any indiscretion, any type of expression. So the mother's little helper concept of the pills was just give her a pill, shut her up. Just give her this, shut her up. And so, you know, that's probably, I would guess, kind of what happened in the beginning for your mom was it was more just

David La Torre (52:05)
Right?

Right?

Well said.

I

agree.

GenX Adulting Podcast (52:23)
Shushing her with substances because there was no space in society to acknowledge what was really going on there Isn't that that period of time to where women were starting to get heavily marketed to around you can do everything Well that started a little bit of additional pressure on the stay-at-home mom That was more like late late 70s into the early 80s. But yeah, then it's like you can do it all you can be perfect You can be thin you can raise perfect children. You can work outside the home and make money. Oh Yeah, yeah

David La Torre (52:48)
Remember those Angelique commercials? I can bring home the bacon,

fry it up in a pan, never let you forget you're a man. Can you imagine a commercial like that today? ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (52:53)
That's what I'm thinking of, yeah.

such a crock of

shit. It's like you now women need to do everything you're already doing, but also now go make money but no one acknowledged, okay, men, you also need to help on the domestic front. So nothing changed there. It was just like double your work, but they sold it to us as self worth. It's so true. Okay, so during your elementary years, you've got this life going on where there's this 70s

David La Torre (53:03)
It's so true.

Right?

So true. So true.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (53:27)
world of partying and substance use, but in school, were you able to create kind of more of a normal life for yourself with athletics or art or clubs or did you? Okay.

David La Torre (53:39)
I was just a normal kid who

loved the Pittsburgh Steelers growing up in Pennsylvania. I wanted to be Terry Bradshaw. You know, play kickball with my buddies, Little League Baseball. You know, after we'd win a game, coach would pile us in the back, just pick up and take us to the ice cream place and we'd all get ice cream cones. Imagine putting kids in back of a flatbed truck now and screaming and screaming down a highway, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (54:04)
Yeah.

David La Torre (54:07)
I mean, that is that not Gen X if that's not Gen X, I don't know what is. ⁓ so yeah, I mean, right. It's so true. And the smoke's coming back. It feeds its way through the back of the cab and then out past you. And I, I just, just remember being in fifth grade and it kind of like, kind of struck me right there in fifth grade. I'm sitting in.

GenX Adulting Podcast (54:12)
Especially when he's throwing, he's smoking his cigarette.

Yes.

David La Torre (54:33)
⁓ class and I just I finish a quiz and I start looking at kids all around the room and I I don't know why but I remember thinking I wish I had their house I wish I like and you know all these years later, you know all every one of their families is probably screwed up in some way like you know back then and but back then I thought I was the only one who had a family that was really messed up because you know, my dad starts

My mother's doing what she's doing. And then my dad starts smoking a lot of pot. ⁓ I could probably roll a joint, ⁓ blindfolded, but I've never rolled one because I watched him roll them roll hundreds, not thousands of joints. And you can never roll one. You've got to roll two because you never know when you need another one. And so I used to watch that all the time, but then the drugs got more and there was more cocaine in the house and

GenX Adulting Podcast (55:14)
Mm.

David La Torre (55:32)
the party started getting harder and harder. then he's, he figures out early on that, ⁓ probably my father was, is he didn't want to, he wanted to be his own boss, but he really didn't know how to do it. I, you know, subsequently just sort of looked into his past a lot, interviewed a lot of his friends and he was always like trying to get rich quick or he, you know, where he sold ads for travel.

magazine that he wanted to do. Then he was a carpet cleaner on the side. He clean Oriental rugs and he had a partner in that. So he kept going through all these ways to try and make extra money while he was being a successful salesman. If he had just really focused on that job, he could have been so successful. mean, you we could have had that American dream as a family, which

You the first step was moving out of the city into the suburbs. It's our American dream, you know, and we've got real potential here, but I think he realized I could start selling drugs and he started some. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (56:37)
I was gonna ask you that if that's, because coke back

then wasn't the most common thing, especially in the family unit, right? So have to sell it.

David La Torre (56:44)
No, I remember

him selling pot first and they would have trash bags full of marijuana. He had a partner, trash bags full of marijuana. But then he realized he could sell cocaine and all of a sudden we don't need trash bags anymore. You can just have a little baggie and make five times as much in one little baggie than you were with a trash bag of pot.

GenX Adulting Podcast (56:52)
Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (57:13)
that somewhere along those lines. I don't know what the exact economics were at the time off the top of my head, but, and he became a go-to guy in Harrisburg for buying Coke. And that happened, that continued for a number of years. So he's out at all hours. know, a problem with my dad is, and a problem with, think a lot of drug dealers is they use it as much as they sell it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (57:38)
Yeah.

David La Torre (57:38)
And so my dad developed a big problem. He was out all the time. My mom's home depressed, alcoholic. ⁓ By this point, ⁓ no matter how much drugs they sold, money was always a problem. ⁓ And because I think my father snorted away more than he sold and eventually gets fired from his business form job. And and ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (57:54)
Yeah.

David La Torre (58:09)
He had decided without telling anybody that he was gonna open an antique shop. Now he had shown an interest in antiques and he really was fascinated by them. And when I tell you, when I said like he's like the smartest guy I ever met, he decides he's gonna learn everything about antiques and our bookshelf, what you call family room,

we called the playroom and I've never known another family who called their family room playroom in the history of my life. So when I say like on the shelf in our playroom, that was our family room. I don't know why we called it the playroom. And it was all these books on antiques and he read everyone cover to cover and he could tell me anything. He could look at something and tell you exactly when it was made, how much it's worth, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he starts collecting them. And then the day he's fired, you know, my

GenX Adulting Podcast (58:42)
Yeah.

David La Torre (59:04)
My mother calls back to his office and said, you're going to regret when you fired my husband. How dare you? He's meant so much to your company. She hung up. He's like, they're right. And she's like, what do mean they're right? She goes, he goes, I wasn't focused on it anymore. It was it was time. Like I want to open an antique shop. And I remember my mother going, you know what? You want to open it? He's like, and I already have a place. He's like, you what?

And there was a shop, a little shop in Midtown in downtown Harrisburg where a clog shop was located. They sold clogs. Yeah, it was a clog shop and it had a big clog painted on the window and clogs had ended their run. And it was time for the clog shop to go. And my father was going to rent this out and he turned it. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (59:42)
Logs.

Yeah.

David La Torre (1:00:00)
In about 10 months, he opened what was called Old Town Antiques, O-L-D-E, Town with an E as well, Antiques. ⁓

There's just one problem with antiques and opening a shop in the city in December of 19, this is December of 1981. There's a problem with that. They, he decided to open a shop in a city where all the retail had moved out five years earlier to this new thing called malls in suburbia. And not only was he in the city where nobody was going to buy retail,

but he was selling a product nobody needed. even everybody needs shoes, maybe not clogs, but somebody's gonna buy shoes, right? Well, he decides he's gonna open an antique shop in the middle of a city where nobody shops. And so now he's got rent and a business and you've got to buy and buy and buy. So he's selling drugs to...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:00:49)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:01:08)
really kind of run everything through the antique shops. You might say he was maybe laundering a little money. I wouldn't argue with you, but he's got to buy more antiques to sell the antiques and he's got to sell more drugs. All of a sudden he's selling drugs out of the antique shop. And ⁓ that's when the police first found out really who he was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:01:28)
This is so interesting. I'm just going back to how you said he had all these side jobs in addition to his main job. And he was always starting these jobs and then getting the interest in the antiques and reading all the books. Do you think you're ADHD? Because that sounds like ADHD to me. And also,

David La Torre (1:01:36)
Yeah.

Right.

Yes, without question. I think I have,

I don't know that I have ADHD, but I think I've got a little ADD. It was always very hard for me to focus. ⁓ I've gotten a lot better at it as I've gotten older. ⁓ That's for sure. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:01:53)
something like some ADD.

that dopamine

hit of the new thing, the new thing, the new thing, and that aligns with the drug use too, right? And then the dopamine hit from selling drugs. so, ⁓ and then jumping into the antique store, but without the forethought of this isn't the right location. This isn't, you know, it just, just like going for it. Yeah.

David La Torre (1:02:06)
Yes.

Yep.

Nothing. When I tell you so smart how smart he

was, that was so dumb. So dumb. So we'd end up. yeah. yeah. yeah. And so we'd spend our weekends at antique shows and flea markets. And let me tell you, that's everything a young boy wants to do. mean, ⁓ I mean, well.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:02:26)
Right. But it was that hit, right? That let's go for it, you know.

Yeah.

In Harrisburg area. Not to pick on

your area, but it's, I feel like if I wanted to buy antiques, I'd go to Harrisburg. Cause it feels like you could probably ⁓ have your pick of the litter. Yeah.

David La Torre (1:02:50)
Well, Lancaster, Lancaster

fashions itself as the antique capital of America. So you had lots of antique shows you could go to in central Pennsylvania and make money. He never should have opened a shop. He's just very different back then. He should have just traveled show to show. And, know, when, when possible did private sales, but having that shop in center city really destroyed our finances.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:02:59)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So when did this, how old were you first of all when your mom ⁓ became an alcoholic would you say?

David La Torre (1:03:24)
After the store opened, so I'm about 12 years old.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:03:28)
Okay, and then so this so up until that point, he was working as a salesman working all the side jobs. They're having the party still only on Fridays.

David La Torre (1:03:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mostly Fridays, I remember some Saturdays. I remember one time my mom said, do you want to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live? I'm like, why would I want to watch ⁓ John Travolta? Like that didn't make sense to me. I thought she was talking about Saturday Night Fever. I had no idea what Saturday Night Live was. But I did, know, because I thought it was cool to stay up with my family. But I could start to see what was going on too.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:03:43)
Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

even then. did they ever, did anyone ever ⁓ try to offer you anything at the parties? Or was that kind

David La Torre (1:04:06)
No, but

I remember one day getting up when I was really young and wanted to see what it was all about. And my dad had like a glass desk blotter over top of the wood desk. And that's where they would do coke lines. And so I remember getting up one day and sticking my nostril down on the glass and trying to snort off the glass. And I didn't feel anything. And I just then I sort of hunkered down a little bit more. then I.

I I saw what I thought might have been cocaine and maybe it wasn't. I remember feeling like a little bit of a burn, but I remember thinking like, that's it. Like, that's all this is. Like, ⁓ it's nothing. listen, I don't know if I had, if I snorted anything, but at that time I was looking for like trying to be like my parents. I wanted to be like my dad. And so I didn't know any better. ⁓ And ⁓ I remember ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:04:45)
Right.

Right.

David La Torre (1:05:05)
New Year's Eve, 1978, every New Year's we'd go to our grandparents and be in bed by nine and I'd be all pissed off about that. But now they were inviting me out to dinner with another couple, a couple who the man ended up being a new drug partner for my father, bankrolling cocaine sales. And we're out at this great restaurant called Lombardo's in downtown Harrisburg. It's lit up at night. They have a

The whole building's glass and the elevator is outlined in light bulbs. I can remember watching it go up and down. ⁓ We walked right past the gazebo room restaurant. I don't know if you know gazebo room salad dressing, but it was just created in Harrisburg at the gazebo room restaurant, sold nationally. ⁓ walked past that into this place and that's night I had my first filet mignon. And I just thought like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:05:51)
cool.

Mm.

David La Torre (1:06:01)
This is life cannot get any better than this. And so my mother and the other woman get up to go to the bathroom, use the restroom. And my father's partner turns to me and says, Hey, David, we know you're at the parties at the house and you see what's going on. And I go, yeah, he goes, do you ever talk about it with your friends? And I thought that was odd. And I go.

No, why? goes, well, that's good. That's good. goes, do me a favor. Whenever you talk about it, whenever we talk about it, I want you to call it soda. And I remember thinking at the time, okay, yeah, that's fine. I'll call it soda. He didn't want me to say cocaine. Didn't want me to say coke. He wanted me to call it soda. And now I look back and I think how fucked up that whole story, that whole exchange was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:06:44)
Mm.

Yeah.

David La Torre (1:06:56)
Like

you're telling it at the time I was eight years old, New Year's Eve, 1978. I'm up late. I get I'm to get to go home and watch Dick Clark for the first time and the Apple lower in Times Square. And this fucking guy is telling me to call cocaine soda like.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:06:58)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Why? That's such an odd thing. In Pennsylvania, you probably called things pop, right? Soda was pop. Okay. So you were on the line then probably.

David La Torre (1:07:20)
No, Pop was Western PA. I called it Soda. Yeah, I was

right on the line. All my buddies from Pittsburgh that I met in college to this day, they'll call it Pop. You know, they'll stop at the Beer and Pop warehouse in Harrisburg. You start stop at the Beer and Soda warehouse. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:07:30)
Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. That's

so, so yeah, that's, that's a crazy story. That's fucking nuts. once you become a parent. And I'm sure when with your older son, when he turned around that age, did you ever reflect like this was the age I was when this guy had this conversation with me.

David La Torre (1:07:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No, because I didn't think about it for years. you know, I've recently written a book about growing up and ⁓ and so I didn't think about these things. So I started writing a book again. The book ended up being somewhat tumultuous for me in some ways, but also, I think, medicinal in many ways. And I decided to write it after my mother died in twenty twenty four.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:07:58)
Okay.

Right.

David La Torre (1:08:22)
My father passed in 2006. I made my peace with both of my parents. Got along with them years later. ⁓ But when my mother died, I remember thinking like, this is the time I really need to write about my childhood. But to answer your question, because I think it can be helpful to other people. You don't have to become like your parents. And I think too many people choose the road their parents choose. ⁓ I had just...

memory holds so much of those things. There was never a moment where I looked at Gus and thought, oh man, to answer your question, oh man, when I was his age, I was doing such and such, or I was trying to stop my mom from killing herself, or it was always something. But I never threw parallel paths.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:09:06)
and interesting. I think I know for me when I because I have trauma from my childhood and as my children grew. That's when some things really landed for me of in different stages realizing I went on that journey kind of along like as they grew it made me that's when I would kind of really trigger back and it became like wow it at six or seven. We just left my dad's miss his apartment.

David La Torre (1:09:19)
Interesting.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:09:34)
And now we're going to see my stepmom and he's telling me, don't tell her that we saw her and don't tell her. And I'm just thinking that's normal. Like, okay. And didn't really think how insane that was. So my son was six or seven and I was like, my God, that was abuse. No, it's crazy. Okay. So you're saying, so it sounds like around 12 is your mom is in the throes of alcoholism.

David La Torre (1:09:38)
my god.

and all total abuse. mean, what are you thinking? Like they're...

And the

only reason that happened is because they opened the antique store, by the way, so she could walk to a liquor store because we she wasn't driving from Dauphin to liquor stores all the way out in Harrisburg. It only happened because they opened the antique store and they both worked at the antique store. And there was a liquor store around the corner where she could buy bottles of Smirnoff vodka and she would drink a bottle a day. Yeah, a bottle of that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:10:07)
Okay.

Right.

Okay. Wow. Okay.

So you're coming home from school to an latch key. That's when you were really latch key because they're at the antique store and your sister too, right? I assume. Well, what's interesting if you're if your dad's selling, I bet he kept your mom self medicated with his products.

David La Torre (1:10:30)
Total latch key. Total latch key. Yeah. Yeah. yeah.

that's a great point because.

⁓ My dad needed my mother to be alcoholic because it was a crutch for him. And I'll tell you, I'll jump around a little bit from time to time, but she did end up going to rehab ⁓ twice, two or three times in life. The first time she comes home, like I'd gone to see her in rehab and she was a different person and...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:10:52)
Yes. It's cheaper.

David La Torre (1:11:13)
I was really hard on her when I got there and we left on very good terms and I very excited for her to get home. Well, he thought, let's go celebrate at our favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered her a glass of wine. And I just looked at him and I was still, I was like 13 or 14 at that time. And I just looked at him and my sister was next to me and I just said, what the fuck are you doing? Like, this is really hard for her to do. What the fuck are you doing?

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:11:42)
How old were you? He just said 13 or 14. 13 or 14, okay. Enough to know, enough to be aware.

David La Torre (1:11:43)
I think 13, 14, somewhere in there. Yeah,

and she's like, honey, it's only one glass. And that was it. And she's right back on the train. And he needed her to be. He needed her to be. ⁓ Because I think in a lot of ways, it justified him being who he was, quite frankly.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:11:59)
Why?

So if she was

healthy, it would kind of fuck with his mindset of not being healthy.

David La Torre (1:12:10)
Yes. yeah, because he always had something over

her. My father was very manipulative. ⁓ know, so many things I think about with my father. ⁓ You know, you felt loved at the time, but you but now I realize that he was manipulating us to feel a certain way, and he liked to pit us against my mother and he would get violent with my mother and

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:12:15)
day.

David La Torre (1:12:39)
Blame everything on her. My father never apologized to us for anything ever. You know, when he got arrested and they issued a search warrant on our house, I don't know if you've ever seen a house after a search warrant, but everything in each room is piled into the middle because they don't give a shit. They're there to find drugs and cash or what else they can find. And, ⁓ and,

I actually played in a high school football game while my house is being searched by police and I noticed nobody was there. And bottom line is, you know, after the game, I'm at high school for two hours waiting for a ride and a non-relative comes to pick me up and I knew something was wrong right away. And I looked in the car and this woman was emotional and I just opened the door and I said, dad got arrested, didn't he? Like I knew. And

But the next fucking day, I get a call that I need to go home and start cleaning the house. And yeah, they're going to be out of jail today or tomorrow, and you need to go home and clean the house up.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:13:40)
from your parents.

they find anything that made the train?

David La Torre (1:13:51)
yeah, they found drugs

and they found drugs and he told them where drugs were in the antique store. He had gotten really sloppy selling, he had gotten really sloppy selling drugs.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:14:01)
Back then, mean, Pennsylvania's a pretty liberal state these days, but back then they were pretty conservative in terms of the law, I think. That was probably a big fucking deal.

David La Torre (1:14:05)
Mm-hmm.

Right, that's fair.

It was was definitely a big deal when you're a football player at a local high school and ⁓ everybody reads the paper back then and it was in the news the next day and. ⁓ I would argue the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life is to go to school on that Monday.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:14:21)
Thank

I'm sure. I'm sure.

David La Torre (1:14:33)
And to this day, it's a, like it's, feel, ⁓ I feel shame about it to this day. ⁓ but I, I gotta give my high school credit. Nobody said anything to me, none of the kids and none of the teachers. ⁓ about a year, well, hold on real quick, about a year before his arrest, ⁓

Our local priest told a teacher at McDevitt, he thinks there's something wrong with our family. And the teacher called me into his office or into his classroom between periods. And I looked him straight in face and said, I have no idea what he's talking about. Everything's fine. Like I fucking lied to that teacher's face right into his eyes, like nothing. And the teacher ended up leaving and leaving our school. So I never had to.

go in and see him after my father got arrested and be like, you were right. ⁓ But I asked a good friend of mine years later, I'm like, why didn't you say anything? And this friend said, we didn't know what to say.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:15:33)
Yeah.

Was everyone shocked? Did no one have any idea?

David La Torre (1:15:48)
No one had any idea because I was like a, I don't want to say a jock. I was very average athlete, right? And I was, I took honors classes, so I was sort of smart and, um, but then I fell out of honors classes because the shit was so bad at home and I'm up all night caring for my mother and like, it's fucking exhausting. Um, but by and large, I was a clean cut prep kid and I wore a lot of masks. You learn to wear masks.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:16:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David La Torre (1:16:18)
You learn to not show anything. And I was somewhat of a joker, class clownish type person, not total class clown, but that's how you hide your sadness and what you're going through by cracking jokes all day. So you never would have guessed. You could look at some of the kids in school who you knew do drugs and you think, I would think it would be that person, that person. Nobody would ever think it was me. Nobody would ever think my parents were drug dealers.

especially when everybody knew they were antiques dealers. And so nobody said anything to me, nobody at the school, no teacher said anything. I'm still shocked about that to this day. Part of me at first was like, school, so much for being concerned about kids and does he need any help? But I look back on it now and I'm just glad nobody said anything. I really am.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:16:50)
right.

If

Well, I think

back then, though, appearances was so important, like to add appearances was that was everything. And so especially Catholic school, it's a weird dynamic because holding up the appearance, the school would also support that, too. You know, so it's it is a weird thing because they are because our kids went to Catholic school. So I'm very familiar with Catholic school. ⁓

David La Torre (1:17:19)
Yeah.

Right.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:17:40)
Now it would be treated differently, but I could totally see how, yes, we're here for the children, but we would like everything to stay nice and quiet and polished, too. We don't really want to deal with that type of thing.

David La Torre (1:17:53)
Yeah,

I just remember thinking high school was over for me. Like that was it. know, high school is over for me. But then I was able to I met a girl, my really kind of my first girlfriend. I would argue my only serious girlfriend in high school. We didn't stay together through all of high school. ⁓ But. ⁓ She's just such a great person and. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:18:01)
That's it.

David La Torre (1:18:21)
You know, I've done a lot of thinking about life since then and recalling all those years and how lucky I was to have this girlfriend at that time to kind of make me realize that I wasn't worthless.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:18:33)
Right. Right. Well, did you feel

because you had said that your mom was violent with you guys or was it just you or you and your with both of you or just you?

David La Torre (1:18:39)
So was my father. Years

later, my sister told me ⁓ one day she spilled something in the kitchen and my mother grabbed her by the hair and beat her head against the kitchen floor. And my sister never told my father or me because she didn't want to get more trouble from her mother.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:18:52)
Mm.

But

was that the only incident you think for your sister?

David La Torre (1:19:03)
⁓

no, my mother. I was at the age where my mother couldn't hurt me anymore, but she could hurt her. She could hurt. She could hurt Caroline and. ⁓

But dad was always intimidating.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:23)
Did your dad, was he violent with both of you or just you? Okay.

David La Torre (1:19:26)
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But my

dad wasn't like he was randomly violent with my mother when they would get into arguments. But he would not just hit us consistently like, you know, basically we would misbehave or something and it would build up in him and then finally he'd have too much. And so when he spanked us, it was like a 10 to 15 minute beating. Like it was a beating.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:54)
Right.

David La Torre (1:19:55)
Like it

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:19:55)
Right.

David La Torre (1:19:56)
wasn't like, me smack you on the ass and redirect you. ⁓ it was, I'm going to beat you close fisted.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:20:07)
Yeah, it's not like cause and effect to learn a lesson, steer behavior, it was the release.

David La Torre (1:20:09)
Right, right, there's no, yeah. It was

him releasing a lot of frustration, I think had a lot more to do ⁓ with the shit in his life than it did with anything that my sister or I did.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:20:22)
No, displacement of anger onto you guys, absolutely. Is that from your earliest memory? Or was there an age when it started in particular?

David La Torre (1:20:31)
It's not my earliest memory. I was in sixth grade and I brought home a report card with four B's and five C's and my father beat the shit out of me. ⁓ How dare you bring these grades home? You need to. And I remember him backing me into a corner by our front door and just punching the shit out of me. Like you do not bring those grades home. Meanwhile, I'm exhausted.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:20:41)
Okay. All right.

David La Torre (1:20:58)
up every night trying to stop my mother from doing god knows what. ⁓ He's not home. Because he's out gallivanting around, selling drugs, partying, acting like he's working. It's total bullshit. You know, so he can do whatever the fuck he wants. And I bring home four B's and five C's and I get jacked up for it. And that's really kind of when it started.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:21:13)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:21:24)
But like, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you like there were weekly or even monthly beatings. It would be maybe once or twice a year, but when it happened, man, it was big time. Like I remember him spanking my sister and I would just run out of the room thinking, well, I might catch a random here or maybe he'll just decide to start beating on me because it was not pleasant, man. They were snot knockers.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:21:52)
What about your mom? Was hers just once or twice a year or was hers more regular?

David La Torre (1:21:58)
they got in a lot of physical altercations. Usually when my mother said something like, I'm going to call the police on you or I'm going to leave. Like, then it got like, you know, him pushing her up against a wall. Stuff like that. I just remember the first time it happened. ⁓ I remember, ⁓ he was cutting cocaine at the desk. You remember? Not that you would remember, but.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:22:08)
Okay.

David La Torre (1:22:28)
Back then, people to create the image they were selling more cocaine than they had would mix in certain ⁓ natural elements, basically called cut for lack of better term, ⁓ into the cocaine. And he puts cut in the cocaine and asks my mom what she thinks, and she does a line, and she goes, seems fine to me. And then he does a line, he says, this is not fine at all. And he starts freaking out, he starts blaming her. He's the one who put the cut in. And then he sort of jacks her up against a wall.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:22:39)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:22:58)
and ⁓

It was crazy as like, I was always the one that like tried to stop it, like step in and everything. And my sister would just ignore it. Like she was really tough. Like my sister's tough. And she would just tune that shit out, you know, or just try to, she just handled it differently.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:23:15)
She disassociated.

Yeah, it was how she coped. probably disassociated. I'm just trying to think with your dad, you know, how you talked about he was indulged, he was spoiled and all that. I'm assuming he was a narcissist. It's sounding like.

David La Torre (1:23:21)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know that I want to designate him a narcissist because I always feel like narcissists really take care of themselves too. Like they want to be seen as handsome and I'm in great shape, whether it's a man or a woman. And he just really kind of let himself go and he was very slovenly. Let himself get out of shape, didn't wear nice clothes, didn't really get haircuts.

Everyone saw how he'd be dressed really nice and it would be shocking.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:24:02)
But with the drug use, so do you think he was just like one of those people that just started smoking pot like everyone was doing at that time? And then it just spiraled into this maybe tying in with the ADHD or the dopamine hits or needing something new. just spiraled.

David La Torre (1:24:09)
Yes, without question, without question.

Without question.

Yeah, I mean, because then he eventually became a crack addict. It just became like the next drug. And then he started selling crack, but he kept doing crack. He would stay up all night for days at a time in the bedroom right next to us smoking crack. And I could hear him smoke it. But now my mother in those days would sleep in the playroom on the couch. She just became a perpetual sleeper on the couch. Now, whether that was to stay away from my father,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:24:23)
Wow.

David La Torre (1:24:48)
I really don't think it was. think she liked to stay in the playroom and get drunk and have her own room because there wasn't an extra room to go to in the house. And she would go and sleep in the playroom every night on the couch. And by the way, when I would bring bad grades home that had to be signed by the teacher, like you to have your parents sign, I would wait until she was drunk. I figured it out. I'd wait until she was drunk. I'd wake her up and have her sign something she would never remember.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:24:57)
Right.

Right.

David La Torre (1:25:16)
Just

the little things you figure out that you start to take advantage of when you know your parents are fuck-ups.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:25:22)
Well, you said that you would be up late taking care of your mom or making sure she wasn't doing something. What was it that you were trying to make sure she wasn't doing or what? Was she threatening that?

David La Torre (1:25:31)
not kill herself.

Yeah, because I found out we had a gun the day we came home and there were burglars in our house. Me, my mom and my dad. I don't know why my sister wasn't there. I don't know what the situation was. She was somewhere and we came home and there was a car in our driveway and my dad

looks in the car, he goes, don't who these people are. And he goes in the house and I get out of the car and I'm 10 at this time. So I'm skipping around a little bit and I'm sorry about that. And I look in and I see him rush toward the end of our living room and grab a guy and jack him up against the wall. A guy who was a lot bigger than my father. My father was, he was a tough son of a bitch. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:26:12)
No, no, you're good.

David La Torre (1:26:29)
And I go in the house and I hear my mom David don't go in there and I go in the house and. Yeah, he's got this guy up a wall. What are you doing here? And he goes, I. You owe my you owe somebody hired me you owe them a you owe them $1000 for cocaine and he goes, I don't what you're talking about. I don't do drugs. He goes, I don't care if you do drugs or not, man. He goes, I made a mistake. I'm out of here. Guy had like a.

He had gotten some sort of basket or something in our house and was stealing stuff because he couldn't find cocaine and couldn't find this cocaine that he was looking for ⁓ or this $1,000. mean, nobody's got $1,000 lying around their house. So he thought he was going to steal shit. I don't know whether that shit was true or not. ⁓ And I come in and then my mom comes in and my mom immediately goes into the back of the house. like, just, I remember thinking, where the hell is she going?

And she comes down, she's got a 38 in her hand. go, Jesus Christ, like she's got a 38. Like I was more scared of her having that gun than of that guy in the house at that moment. And he's like, listen, just let me go. You don't have it. I'm not gonna problem. I'm gonna leave. And there were other two people in the other car. They come in. One was a young woman. She was 18. And another was a guy who was asleep in the back seat.

And he had like a rock shirt of some concert shirt on of some sort, long hair, just looked like a fucking burnout. I'm 10 and I'm fucking scared shitless. And I wish could tell you I was real brave and everything, but I was 10 years old going like, what the hell? God. And these other two people come in and...

The one guy's like, hey, we're gonna leave. And the woman's like, yep, we're outta here. And the other guy says, no, we're not. Fuck this. The guy was asleep. He said, fuck this. He goes, let's do them. And they didn't have any weapons on them, but that fucking scared me at that moment. And my father goes ⁓ to my mom, me the gun. And she didn't respond. goes, I said, fucking hand me the gun.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:28:34)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:28:47)
And he hands, she hands him the gun and he drops it down to his leg and he cocks it. And that place got fucking really quiet. And, and, ⁓ you know, my dad looked at the guy who said, let's do them. And that guy is looking at me and then he looks over at my dad and he goes, Hey, motherfucker, look at me right now. And the guy was sort of like, and he says, motherfucker, I said, look at me right now. And this guy turned and he said,

He said, you're going to die here right now. You touch anybody, you are fucking dead. And he had that gun in his hand and they fucking ran out of there real fast. Like they tripped and fell into the screen door down at the screen door and ran out. And you know, the crazy thing about that whole thing is my dad ran out, put the gun down, opened a drawer, got a pad and pen and ran out. No, not a pad, just a pen ran out.

and wrote their license plate down on his arm and came back in and sat down. was just fucking, you could just see all the adrenaline starting to drain out at that point. And my mom's saying, what are we going to do? And I just remember thinking, all right, I remember saying, what do you mean? What are we going to do? Call the cops. And they didn't know what to do. I mean, they literally didn't know whether they should call the cops.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:29:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David La Torre (1:30:15)
And then my dad called the cops and that guy ended up going to jail for a period of time. And the other two got off because they claimed he didn't know he was breaking into the house. Like, you know, that he had not told them that. And ⁓ what was interesting is when I was researching the book, you know, to really tell the story in the ⁓ affidavit of probable cause for arresting the guy who broke into the house, ⁓ they noted that

he had said he was there because my father owed a thousand dollars for cocaine. And years later when my father was arrested and I had that affidavit of probable cause too, they list that, they list that. they used that story that that guy told, they filed that away. I think that was the moment my dad got on their radar. Like why would this guy randomly break into somebody's house in the middle of

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:31:01)
to use that.

Yes.

Yeah.

David La Torre (1:31:15)
dolphin Pennsylvania and claim that he owes this guy $1,000 in drugs. They filed that away and in that arrest warrant, they recalled that moment years earlier when that happened at our house. I just thought that was really...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:31:31)
when they started the paper trail of like all yeah yeah building that yeah no but that makes sense

David La Torre (1:31:33)
Yeah, I think so. I don't know for sure. I know for sure.

I interviewed to the two cops who arrested my parents, believe it or not, for my book. They don't remember details like that. They don't remember how it all, they just remember that my dad was selling drugs out of the antique store in Harrisburg and some of the businesses knew about it and started complaining.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:31:43)
Wow.

David La Torre (1:31:59)
and they started surveillance and they sent in some people who were informants to buy off him and he sold to them and they got him.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:32:06)
So how long had they been watching him? Do you know?

David La Torre (1:32:09)
⁓ That went down pretty quickly from when they started getting complaints from the city like you don't fuck around when when when city businesses are saying this guy's selling drugs like and that's what the one Retired Harrisburg City detective told me goes when you get a complaint like that you start moving in pretty quickly and they were able to develop some informants pretty quickly who knew my father went into the shop and ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:32:19)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:32:37)
executed purchases and had two purchases. then on, it was a Friday night in October of 1986, I'm playing in a football game and nobody from my family's there. And I'm like, as nutty as my parents were, like they were always at all my football games. Like there are those moments, right? Of our parents, there were moments of normalcy that sort of almost betray you in a way. Like you think like this might be it, that we could be really normal at some point.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:33:07)
Yes.

David La Torre (1:33:07)
And

it was like that always sort of happened when I was playing football. Like nothing made my dad happier than I was playing football. I played it. went to a school called Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And we're pretty good back then. I mean, it's an amazing program now. They're multiple state champions, but we were really on the rise back then. Had some good teams. And so my old man was really into it. And when he wasn't there and there was no reason for them not to be there and my grandfather would

come. My maternal grandfather, my poppy, would come to every game and he wasn't there. like... And I'm out playing in the middle of the game and I... Because you always look... know, people act like football players don't look up in the crowds. They do. They do. Like, we're looking at, you know, we're hoping our girlfriend's watching us. We're looking for our parents, you know, all that stuff. And when they weren't there, like, I got really distracted during that game because I fucking knew something was wrong. And I was right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:33:43)
something.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And that was the night that they got arrested.

David La Torre (1:34:07)
Yeah,

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:34:09)
And I was going to bring up, did your parents, because you had said they weren't at the game, so I thought, okay, so they must have come to your, they did some normal things. one of them was, like, was your mom involved in your school at all? she volunteer or any of that stuff?

David La Torre (1:34:18)
They really did.

No, no. She

came to one after school activity as a mother, and I always wanted my mother to do that like the other moms did. She did it one time and I was just it was so happy. Do remember Three Mile Island, 1979? So the whole world's afraid of a nuclear accident, whole all of America. Well, that's happened four miles from where my grandparents live, so they had to come live with us. Those 10 days were the happiest 10 days of my life.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:34:39)
Yes. Yes.

David La Torre (1:34:55)
Everybody's worried about a nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania. I was happy because my grandparents were at our house and my parents couldn't act like they acted. They were like they were like the cleavers for 10 days. ⁓ Yeah, and when my and when I was sad when TMI ended. When when the emergency ended because they left and they they as soon as they left man, they could not light up a joint fast enough. And by the way.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:34:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. What a trip. Wow.

Yeah.

I bet.

David La Torre (1:35:23)
Everywhere we drove, joints in the car all the time, smoke like... ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:35:29)
So like the rest of us are having smoke cigarette, talking about cigarette smoke in the car with the windows rolled up. You were dealing with pot smoke too. You know, so it's, I think that's such a Testament though, too. What was your childhood is that, um, the nuclear fear that whatever was going on three mile Island, uh, was one of the most positive times in your childhood. And I think that that just, that just sums it up right there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

David La Torre (1:35:37)
All the time. All the time.

Right.

Crazy. Crazy, right?

And look, I've never done any hard drugs in my life, but I have Smoke Pot. I freely admit that. And quite frankly, it's legal in most states now anyway. It's legal in New Jersey where we have a house.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:35:59)
you

Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (1:36:11)
I cannot get high off a pot. I can't. Now, it's really weird. I have no tolerance for alcohol. Never have. And I've never been a big drinker. When you see what you see when I grew up, a little bit of pot was the most I've ever done. But I really can't get high smoking pot. That's what I think. Because I got to tell you, when you know...

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:36:29)
Yeah.

I wonder if you have a tolerance from...

David La Torre (1:36:41)
When you're constantly in your car with your parents going places and all they do is smoke pot in the car. I, there was so much smoke all the time. All the time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:36:49)
You were probably contact

high a lot of your childhood without realizing it. Yeah, what a trip.

David La Torre (1:36:52)
There's no question. There's no question.

It's impossible that we weren't.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:36:57)
So you said you knew that your parents had a gun and is that why you were afraid your mom was going to kill herself because she was threatening? She was constantly threatening?

David La Torre (1:37:06)
Yes. Well, she would ask,

she would start one night she was stumbling around going, I want the gun, I want the gun, you know, and there were more than a few nights where I had to tackle her. Not really tackle, but stop her. Like there was two steps that led out of our playroom into our living room and I would have to like almost hold her down on those steps really. then just.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:37:14)
Okay.

David La Torre (1:37:31)
Physically manipulate her and throw her onto the couch I remember one night her just screaming and screaming and I just said if you like I'm in fucking hell and I sort of got I'm gonna fucking go get that gun for you like you know, and then she sort of passes out and Man That whole latchkey generation thing like parents really took that shit literally like ⁓ They just they didn't want to be parents in a lot

They just wanted to live their lives. And I really think about my parents at that time. I think that they did the best they could, which was really bad, but they did the best they could. I have to tell you, when I met with the police officers, one was a retired trooper and one was a retired Harrisburg police detective, the trooper went out of his way to tell me to try and put me at ease about my parents. And I just thought that was really cool.

And he was like, I just want you to know, Dave, they didn't start out trying to be addicts. They didn't try to live these lives. It happens. you know, so just maybe just try and take it easy when you remember your parents. Like they didn't mean to be this way. I just thought that was incredibly touching that that's what he chose to. He obviously was very interested in how we turned out and said that, you know, my sister and I are the exception. We both turned out pretty darn well.

And I have a line like, ⁓ you have a choice in life. You don't have to be your parents. So many people do. So many people do. ⁓ our passes are passed, I've often said, ⁓ but it doesn't define our future. ⁓ And they were very surprised. go, you guys are the exception.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:39:21)
Absolutely. Go ahead.

David La Torre (1:39:27)
you and your sister are the exception. He goes, if I had told you what we've seen in drug houses with little children running around in diapers, goes, he goes, it's stuff I still don't want to think about. He goes, you guys are the exception and, ⁓ you should be really proud of yourselves.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:39:47)
Absolutely. I, go ahead. I'm just curious, can you attribute that to anything? Because what you've described is fucking nuts, really. No one can really relate to for the most part.

David La Torre (1:39:55)
Yeah, ⁓

⁓ I think having extended family around who loved us, aunts, uncles, cousins, was really important that we felt loved, even if sometimes it was from afar. Because living in Dauphin, when we moved up there, our family also moved up across the street from us. But that only lasted a couple of years. There was a divorce between an aunt and uncle, and they moved back into Harrisburg City and different places or suburbs out that way. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:40:03)
.

David La Torre (1:40:27)
But they were always like places I could go on the weekend and my grandparents as well. My grandparents were saving for our college and they were so proud. So they were going to send you to college and they paid for my high school tuition. And so having those people around that you know are good people and love you and tell you they love you really went a long way. Having good friends who didn't give me shit about.

really went a long way. I some good high school friends. ⁓ I wish we were friends today, but life gets in the way. ⁓ Who were really supportive of me and never gave me shit about it. I talked about my high school girlfriend there for me. You know, I mean, she was really important and came around at a time in my life when I needed to know that I wasn't shit. And ⁓

So all those things I think culminated in me knowing that I had to get out, but I didn't know how to get out. ⁓ And then eventually deciding why I've got to get the only way to get out of here is to go to college or, know, I never really thought about the military. People like, why didn't you go into military? Well, back then, like we weren't in a of wars and it was the eighties and you didn't do anything. And I had so many friends go into the military, told me all the time.

And I'm so thankful for their service and every service member, but, you know, more than one of them told me like, I'm bored and you know, this is so pre 9 11 and everything else. mean, it's 15, 20 years before. ⁓ Not that they were upset. They weren't going into a battle zone or anything, but I mean, the jobs are sort of mundane. And so I wanted to go to college and ⁓ so I fixated on that and. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:42:05)
Yeah.

Right.

David La Torre (1:42:24)
You know, here I am, fast forward all these years later, I'm 56 years old and my specialty is crisis communications.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:42:30)
which is just ironic, but not because you you came with all your for this moment knowing, but it sounds like what you're describing is you had some balance and you had that normalcy offered by extended family friends, your girlfriend. They were like your anchor into reality and into normalcy, which kind of where you didn't get lost is what the trooper, the cop was talking about is

David La Torre (1:42:33)
Yeah.

Right.

I think that's fair.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:42:58)
get lost and they kind of held you so then you had a chance to at least get through it and then get to college. Like get through it so you can escape where so many kids don't have that anchor and they're just swept away in the chaos and end up in the same situation. I mean, I do think that in general, a lot of us Gen X parents have worked really hard to break the generational trauma and to do different for our children. So I think that's very common. And

David La Torre (1:43:04)
Right.

Right?

Agreed.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:43:27)
And the whole like ⁓ I definitely understand that our parents did the best they could. But we knew we figured out how to do different. And maybe that comes from what we were put through was so traumatic for some of us that there was only that that was our only choice is to do different because we sure as hell aren't going to repeat what we were put through. But even those like Brian grew up in a very fairly normal upbringing. But he's even leveled up.

David La Torre (1:43:38)
I agree.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:43:56)
with our kids from what he, he's like, I'm gonna do better, I'm gonna be closer, I'm gonna improve at least with communication. So something in our generation as parents, we all kind of have this instinct of we're going to give our children what we needed, we're gonna be the people we needed for our children. You have 10 times more motivation than even the rest of us coming, but. ⁓

David La Torre (1:43:59)
Right.

Right?

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:44:24)
I don't know, I just feel like that's a fairly common thing with all of us, it seems.

David La Torre (1:44:29)
I think so. think we were tougher because of circumstances like that. you know, you know, I joked a little bit earlier about latch key, but being more independent helped. mean, I think today, I think there's things we certainly do better as parents now. But one of things are, is we latched down too hard on our kids these days. I don't want you going down the block.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:44:43)
Yeah.

David La Torre (1:44:58)
Meanwhile, I would be all over, you know, when I was a kid and maybe that's why I'm a little afraid of my daughter going here or there for lack of a better explanation. ⁓ But it forced us to grow up faster. ⁓ Even in the even in the best of circumstances, it forced us to grow up faster. and I think it's natural for us to go. We don't want them to have that type of childhood. There's good things we did.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:45:01)
Yep.

David La Torre (1:45:27)
but there was a lot of bad stuff. I think growing up challenged like that in that generation, it just lends itself to becoming better parents, to wanting to be better parents for our kids. mean, Jesus, it can't get any worse than what I went through. you know, it just, you know, I had a low bar by the way, I had a low bar. Yeah, thanks Brian, thank you.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:45:48)
Right. Well, yeah. Hey, good job. Yeah. Yeah,

David La Torre (1:45:57)
Yeah

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:45:58)
but I think you really nailed it right there is we grew up, we had to grow up fast. And so I think we've tried hard to make sure our children get a childhood. We're like, we we are going to make sure that at least from zero to 18, they can look back and say,

Their childhood wasn't that bad. They got a childhood. I think we were forced. We as what you're describing as next level, but as kids, we were forced. I think a collective experience for all Gen Xers is experiencing and dealing with awkward shit at a young age on your own, right? Whether it's at the pool or whatever, the weirdo, you know,

David La Torre (1:46:19)
Yes.

Guess.

Yes.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:46:42)
the down the street that was allowed to interact with us kids because we were latchkey. So we all kind of grew up faster got those life skills because of that weird stuff. Or a guy telling you to call cocaine soda right at a nice restaurant on New Year's Eve like you have this it's such a contrast this yeah this innocent childlike view of this beautiful restaurant which probably was great but not as amazing as a 10 year old sod or however old you are.

David La Torre (1:46:43)
Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:47:11)
13 14 year old but like like so you're like, wow, this is so wonderful and it's all and then and then in the next moment you have this drug dealer saying hey call cocaine soda like that just doesn't happen. None of that's happening. So it's just and they would never understand it. So yeah, we did invent helicopter parenting to a fault. But they sure as hell are getting a childhood good or bad.

David La Torre (1:47:16)
Yeah.

Right.

Hehehehe

Right?

I

have to tell you, you asked me earlier when I really first noticed. So there's two moments to that that I feel like I have to tell you. ⁓ The moment when you realize you're not normal and it's a bad family setting. And then the moment when you realize what's happening is illegal because they are not the same. Just because somebody tells me soda and I shouldn't be doing things around people, you don't equate it as, my God, my dad's a bad guy. You just don't. You don't think in those terms.

And this is so Gen X. The real moment when I realized that my father was a bad guy is we sat down to watch this two hour movie on NBC in October of 1984 and it was called Miami Vice. And which to this day is my favorite TV show of all time. And I'm watching the movie and these guys, you know, it's the pilot. They call it a pilot.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:48:24)
Mmm.

David La Torre (1:48:37)
is a two hour movie and if people liked it they picked they were gonna pick it up for a TV series and I'm like these guys are going after a cocaine dealer a big Colombian drug pen now my father was not a Colombian drug pen but like

It really hit me watching that show that he was a bad guy. Like those cops would bust my dad. And that's when it really clicked for me, like how fucking bad it all was. And like, not only was I afraid of the guy who comes to the house and, you know, and ⁓ breaks into our house and shit like that, but now I'm really thinking like, well, he could go to jail too.

And so any thoughts I ever had of telling anybody how bad things were, I didn't know what would happen if I did. And so then you're really stuck. You are fucked. Like you're like, I just so many times I wanted to tell my grandparents. And, ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:49:30)
Mmm.

David La Torre (1:49:42)
And you just can't because you're thinking, well, what if they called the police? Where would I live? And I would run through all like, well, I don't live my grandparents. I love them. But now I was older and I was starting to become independent. And the last thing I want to do love them to death was live with my grandparents and still, and who would probably make me go to bed every night at nine o'clock. And plus, you always love your parents even though you hate them. And I

couldn't see a situation where I was the reason they went to jail. I couldn't deal with that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:50:15)
I was thinking about that earlier. You were protecting your mom, but you probably had some pretty strong animosity towards your mom. You're not willing to be a narc or tell anybody you're... You got secrets that you're protecting and you're protecting the people that are causing a lot of animosity and chaos in your life. What a dichotomy, right? That's pretty heavy and you're not 18 yet.

David La Torre (1:50:23)
Fucking right.

Yes.

Yeah.

True. Right? Everywhere you look,

everywhere you look like everything is shit, you know, like there's no scenario or moment where you're not completely conflicted about your existence.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:50:44)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Well, and also take into account you've been a victim of abuse. I mean, that's a whole nother thing. That's what I'm touching on. the physical abuse and then the mental and emotional abuse. Yeah, but you have that. Right.

David La Torre (1:50:56)
Right.

Yeah. Right. And it was mental more than anything. He was,

he was very manipulative. ⁓ you know, my sister and I have had so many conversations since our mother died, like, you know, really understanding what our father was doing to us mentally to manipulate us, to get what he wanted, to, ⁓ have a side against our mother and

There'd be situations where he would make fun of her in front of us and she would get upset and we would laugh about it. And it fucking makes me sick. It makes me sick and you know that made her drink.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:51:43)
Yes, she was alone. He was alone.

David La Torre (1:51:45)
Yeah, and I

was not a good, like, I was not a good son. I mean, it's just not, I didn't understand it. You know, right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:51:53)
Nor should you have had to understand.

it's not anything that should have been expected. But and especially knowing now that she probably did go through postpartum depression, she had mental health issues that were never addressed. And then he he needed to control her. So there was no way he was going to allow her to shine or build herself up or be because he needed her down. He needed to control her. And I mean, she was absolutely a victim. There's no question about that. ⁓

David La Torre (1:52:04)
Right?

Right?

There's no question.

I remember everybody

thinking my mother was crazy and my dad was cool. That my dad was cool, but my mom was crazy. I'm like, nobody fucking knows. You know, like, but I kind of thought he was cool too. Like, you know, there was a coolness about him. We talked about him being, you know, a good salesman earlier and charismatic. There was a coolness about him and a craziness about my mother. And, but now I understand it all so much better.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:52:24)
Right.

No, and he probably

Where, you know, that day, ⁓ he got the gun and chased those people off. Were you like, wow, my dad's badass. What a baller.

David La Torre (1:52:55)
Right.

No, honestly, because what ruined it was the realization that they didn't know what they should call the cops. I mean, normally I agree with you. Like if you remove all the shit and that happened and my dad was a law abiding guy who worked 95 every day and he came home and he pulled that I'm like, my dad's the biggest badass on the planet. But that's not how I thought at the time.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:53:07)
There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm hmm.

Yeah. Well, because you saw the hesitation because they were criminals. So you're like, wait a minute, you guys are supposed to know what to do. You don't know it. Why don't you know what? And then a child that makes a child feel even more insecure is my parents are supposed to know what to do, especially in this type of a crisis situation. Talk about, you know, so it sounds like he exploited. He gaslit the shit out of her, let's be real, but he he exploited that craziness in her.

David La Torre (1:53:26)
Right. Right.

Right.

Right.

Right. Right.

Yeah, he did.

Yes, he did. And the more he did it, the more dependent she became on him for him, of him. ⁓ And, ⁓ you know, ⁓ earlier in life, he had, I think, an angry drug customer who was calling our house nonstop. And one night, my dad just basically told me to go fuck himself on the phone. And later that night, somebody shot

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:53:52)
you know and uh...

David La Torre (1:54:20)
through our house, shot a bullet into our house. And bullet lodged in the front below our bay windows. If you imagine like the eight boxes, three rows across bay type windows. And below there was a bullet lodged in because we heard the gun and our dog started barking. that was before the burglary. And my parents never called the cops.

And so that's when I said to them, when the burglary happened, you've got to fucking call the cops. Like I had remembered that when that moment happened, I was never, I never felt safe again in the house because someone is willing to shoot at us and they wouldn't call the cops. And now this guy had broken into our house. like, you better call the cops. And he did.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:55:07)
And

at any time did you know it's because of drugs?

David La Torre (1:55:13)
Well, yeah, I I did the first time I kind of knew, but you don't learn to trust your instincts as a kid. hear that little voice, but you don't know what it's saying to you. Now, when I'm 56, whenever I hear that little voice, I listen to it. But back then, like I knew something was wrong, but I didn't think about it because you don't want to think about it. ⁓ But I think the only reason he called the cops was.

If somebody breaks into our house and I don't call the cops, we are, then anybody, ⁓ everybody's gonna, people talk and people are gonna know that you can break into our house, you can come to this house and we're not, they won't call the cops. So he had to, like I think he did it because he had to, not because he wanted to.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:55:55)
Yeah.

Right. And that's the smart part of him, right? That's the part of him where he's smart and he knows. So when he was arrested at the antique store, was your mom also arrested? at the house. Were they both arrested?

David La Torre (1:56:04)
Yeah, it's very calculating.

Yeah.

They arrested at our house. Yeah, they executed search warrants

at both places. They were getting ready to come to my football game. They were home. And so they executed search warrants at both places. And eventually my dad told them where the drugs were at the antique store. And that's where they found the drugs. They found a little bit at the house because my sister who was there the whole time, ⁓ she answered the door and the cops came to the.

house. She had my sister at the time, 11 years old, 12, answered the door and watched them tear the house apart in front of her. And they bring out my parents in handcuffs and put them on the couch, the same couch where we posed for photos as a little boy and girl, and the photos on the coffee table in front of them, on that couch, in front of that couch where they are sitting. because that was there for years.

I still had the photo and. ⁓ They didn't even talk to her. You think my parents would be like, Caroline, we're so sorry about the paper. They were they were figuring out a plan on how they were going to talk to the cops. And they wouldn't even look at my sister. And eventually a relative came and picked up my sister. My sister got in the car and they drove off and she looked down. She realized she didn't even have shoes on. She didn't even.

think about wearing shoes because it was, how do you live at that trauma? And I wasn't there. You know, she was, and she watched all that happen right in front of her. And she remembers them cheering at one point. And she took that to mean they found something in the house. And, you know, and the cop was trying to get my parents to talk and they wouldn't talk. And then they found something and the cop looked at him.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:57:47)
Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure.

David La Torre (1:58:12)
My dad said too late now, but then my dad said, yeah, but then my dad told them where the cocaine was in the antique shop that they found. And, you know, cause at that point it became like, you know, they were charging my mother and he was going to do whatever it took to see that her charges were dropped. ⁓ but he was going to jail. I thought they were both going to jail and that's a whole other fucking thing. So now you are faced with the.

idea of what's going to happen to us. Where are we going to live? I don't want to live in Stilton. My aunts don't have an extra bedroom. What's going to happen? ⁓ But then my dad cut a deal, pled guilty to the most serious charges. All the others were dropped. My mother was put on probation and my dad got sentenced to one and a half to three. He could have gone

He could have been suffered a huge fine and like a decade in jail and he ended up doing 18 months, which encompassed my entire senior year in high school. My dad was gone. He was in jail. He was in jail. Yeah. And my mother would go visit him every weekend.

GenX Adulting Podcast (1:59:13)
and your mom.

So he was in jail or prison.

And so you guys were able to stay in the house with your mom.

David La Torre (1:59:28)
⁓ My sister stayed with our aunts and I'm very happy that she did because I had to try and get through my senior year high school and care for a mother who was somehow had to run an antiques business and be an alcoholic ⁓ and try and get her through every day. And ⁓ my dad ended up hiring somebody to work with her who was a fucking disaster and a nightmare.

I did not get along with a woman I did not get along with and I was convinced was selling stealing from us. I could tell I was the only one who was fucking sober. You know, you know, I'm 17 years old. I could tell this is 1987. And so, yeah, my senior year was get my mom dressed for work in the morning, drive her to my grandparents and steal.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:00:07)
Right. Right.

David La Torre (2:00:24)
somehow get to school on time, get into school, go to school, go to football practice, come back, pick her up down at the antique store, take her home, make her dinner, get her settled in, ask her not to drink, ask her not to drink again, get drunk every night. And that was like that every day. And I'm just really glad my sister wasn't there. I was mad at the time she wasn't there in a way because I had to fucking deal with it. So when you talk about the issue of being a parentified child, I had never really heard of it till I wrote

I wrote my book and then somebody said, Oh, you're a parentified child. I'm like, the fuck is that? And they're like, well, you're basically the adult of the house. I'm like, that's me. And it was me for a long time, long before my father left, went to prison. I visited him one time and that was it. My mother visited him every

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:01:02)
Yeah, yeah.

So when this happened, was that the first time the extended family found out about the drug dealing?

David La Torre (2:01:21)
You know, I've been asked that question and I don't really know. I don't know what they knew and how they knew. You just didn't talk about it. They knew they smoked pot. It was obvious to everybody they smoked pot. And you know, you come in a house and you smell like pot. And so everybody knew they did pot and I'm pretty sure they probably knew they did cocaine. Did they think he was a major drug dealer? No, I don't think they did, but

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:01:33)
Right.

Right.

David La Torre (2:01:49)
they knew that things weren't great in the house. And I've since had conversations with my family and they were like, we talked so many times about, we try and take you away from them? And, hey, you know, but you just can at the end of the day, everybody's got their own problems too. And they took Caroline and I'm glad they took her.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:02:09)
Was that court ordered or just the family decided? And your mom was fine with that, just let her.

David La Torre (2:02:11)
No, it's a family decision.

I don't

think my mom knew right from wrong anyway or left from right, quite frankly. ⁓ So ⁓ there was no arguments there.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:02:18)
what was going on. Right. Yeah.

Was this when the girlfriend was part of your life too, at least during that senior year?

David La Torre (2:02:30)
⁓

No, we dated my junior year after the arrest. ⁓ Dated my junior year and then broke up prior to my senior year. So I was single my entire senior year. And honestly, I don't think I had a serious girlfriend until I think my sophomore year in college. I took two years off after high school because as soon as my dad went to jail, I said, fuck my grades and I didn't give two shits and I did just enough to graduate from high school.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:02:35)
Okay.

David La Torre (2:02:58)
I remember failing a science class, a teacher going, Dave, you're failing. go, and I looked at the teacher and I just said, I don't need it to get it to get my diploma. And I didn't. I just fucking failed it. Just trigonometry or something. You know, and then I took two years off. So, you know, I didn't go to college until I was 20 and I had everything. ⁓ Got my insurance license, flipped pizzas, framed art, worked in sporting goods.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:03:08)
Yeah.

What did you do during those two years?

David La Torre (2:03:27)
I remember at one point having four jobs at once. My bigger job was insurance and then I worked in sporting goods and then I framed art on the weekends. And then I hated insurance and fuck that. And then I was framing art and then I finally, and this is after my dad came home, but I just finally said like, I gotta fucking get out of here. And I was an awful student, right? I told you how I just screw my grades.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:03:53)
Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (2:03:55)
And I went into my high school. ⁓

When I was 19, I'd been out for two years and almost two years and I walked in my guidance counselor was still there and she said, I knew you'd be back. she's like, you're too smart not to go to college. ⁓

I just really appreciated that. And ⁓ she devised a plan for me to apply. And the plan was basically, let's apply to as many fucking colleges as we can and see who is going to take you as a student looking at your ⁓ transcripts. And ⁓ the first school that accepted me was this little liberal arts school in just outside of Altoona called St. Francis College. And I went up.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:04:21)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:04:48)
and did a tour. My dad was out of jail at this point. And he insisted on going with me. I'm like, I remember thinking like, why the fuck is this guy going with me to college? And I went up there and I met with the guidance counselor and I just fucking aced that interview. Like I told her, said, don't look at my transcript and judge me just by my transcript. I'd been through a lot in two years and I'm ready to be a serious student. And

I think I graduated with college with like a 3.3. The only bad semester I had was when I pledged my fraternity. I had like a 2-3 GPA and I chased graduating with honors for four, three and a half years and I just fell just short at like a 3-3-5 or something like that. But it changed me like it being out in the real world, going through what I went through, knowing that the only path out for me was college, a degree and doing something with that degree.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:05:22)
Okay.

David La Torre (2:05:40)
I just got a lot more serious, man. Now I had fun in college, don't get me wrong. They were four great years, ⁓ but I got good grades and I really appreciate it. I didn't take anything for granted ever again.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:05:52)
those two years between going to college and graduating, were you living at home? Was that when you're done? when he was he smoking crack at that? Is that when he smoked crack was during those years?

David La Torre (2:05:54)
Yeah.

I was. Yeah, my mother. And then he came home. Yeah.

no, he

he had gone. was smoking crack before he went to jail. Yeah, sorry. So yeah, he smoked crack very early on. Like, it's just so funny when I see all these holly. I remember when crack came in, you see the movie New Jack City came out and everybody's talking about the crack crisis in cities. And I'm like, fuck, there's a crack crisis in the room right next to me in suburban America, which I think is another interesting part of that whole Gen X story is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:06:08)
Okay. Okay.

Yeah.

David La Torre (2:06:32)
People think crack was just done in cities by ⁓ people on the streets. No, crack was being done in suburban enclaves across America because it was cheap. It was cheap. And my dad was one of the people doing it because he was selling it. ⁓ yeah, so he did that before he got arrested. That was all kind of part of his thing. And then he came home and started doing drugs right away. And then he was on parole.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:06:44)
Yeah.

He did. I was gonna ask if

he sobered up at all. Or did he ever sober up?

David La Torre (2:07:02)
No,

he came home one day, you I was always afraid of my father. He was like 5'10", 5'11", and he was heavyset, like 225. And, you know, I'm 5'6". At that time, I'm still probably only like...

145 something like that. You know, now I'm a lot bigger. Now ⁓ I'm still five, six. Don't get me wrong, but I'm a lot more filled out now. And he came home one day. I was getting ready to go to work and his eyes were just glazed over. And I just looked at him. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? And he just kind of smiled and I said, you're on fucking parole. I said, you're going to.

They're going to yank your parole. And he just looked at me said, no, they're not. So what do mean they're not? He goes, look at me. Something like this. I remember the exact words. ⁓ Look at me. I'm an older man. I'm not a flight risk. I'm not dealing drugs anymore. I'm just an old guy. I'm the least of their problems. They're never going to bother me. And guess what? They never did. They never did.

He knew it. Yes. Yeah. That made him so smart and so self-destructive.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:08:18)
part of his brain. Yes. Yes, if he could only have channeled

that into something positive and and he would have been such a success, honestly.

David La Torre (2:08:33)
Yeah.

And so I said, you got to be fucking kidding me. He's like, I'm not fucking kidding you because get the fuck out of my way or something like that. And I grabbed him and I jacked him up in that same corner. He beat the fuck out of me years earlier from my report card. And I just looked at him in and I just that's when I was. That's when I made that decision. Like, I'm fucking out of here and I'm going to go to college and I'm going to figure out a way to pay for it. So what I didn't tell you is my grandparents are saving up for.

pay for our college and they used the money they saved up to get them lawyers when they got arrested and all our college money was gone. So we had no way. My sister ended up getting all kinds of that. My sister was an excellent student, ended up getting a scholarship, ⁓ an academic scholarship for most of everything she needed at Penn State University Park. Really just a brilliant, my sister's brilliant. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:09:26)
It's awesome.

David La Torre (2:09:30)
I just had to cobble it together. I should have gone to a state school here in PA where at the time it was probably $7,000, $8,000 a year, but I didn't know any better. St. Francis accepted me, and as soon as they accepted me, I accepted because I couldn't believe somebody accepted me. It was $25,000 a year. I got a lot of it. I was able to get aid for a lot of it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:09:45)
Right.

David La Torre (2:09:52)
I still left school with about $40,000 in college debt, which took me till I was like 40 to pay off. But I didn't have anybody to tell me any different. I just wanted to get to college. And I go up on that trip with my father and there's a fountain in the middle of St. Francis and a St. Francis fountain. And he's sitting there waiting for me after my meeting with the admissions. And he's like, ask me how I did.

good because I just remember him looking down and going, how are you going to pay for it? I'm going to figure out a way. said, I've gotten this far. Like, I'm going to figure out a way. And I just remember he said at the time he just kind of looked, you know, he was just looking up at St. Francis. He said, he said, I just want you to know, know what I did. And.

That's probably the closest I've ever gotten to an apology. And that was a good moment for me. And four months later, was saying goodbye to my family. They were actually leaving for the beach. And I remember waving to my sister as they were leaving, made peace with my mother, ⁓ sort of made peace with my father. And then I went to visit my grandmother. My grandfather had passed.

I was like $2,000 short of going to college and I was $2,000 short and I didn't have it. was, every paycheck I got, I was putting money into it. And she wrote me a check for $2,000. said, see, I told you we were going to pay you, pay for you to go to college. And I just remember feeling so guilty about leaving her behind with them and my sister.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:11:43)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:11:47)
And I could still see her.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:11:49)
but you had to save yourself.

David La Torre (2:11:56)
pull the shade down, wave to me and pull the shade down knowing that she knew it was gonna suck. But she's like, you gotta go, this is what me and your grandfather wanted all these years and we knew this day was coming, you gotta go. And she said, someday you'll understand. And she was right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:12:13)
Yeah, you had to save yourself. You did. You saved yourself. You had the strength to save yourself. And as a parent, you know that she was feeling that way about you, that you need to go. Like that made her happy. Was you leaving? For sure. You know, and your father saying that to you is so powerful and so what a profound moment because you're right. That's the closest you were going to get to an apology or any accountability.

David La Torre (2:12:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

mate.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:12:43)
So what a moment. What a moment.

David La Torre (2:12:44)
Any accountability.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:12:47)
And I don't know if you're religious. I am religious, but I honestly am. I'm interpreting as God was in that moment for sure. Like guiding him. And anyone can interpret it anyway, but that's how I'm interpreting it is like that was the hand of God for sure. Like he, cause he almost got straight for that moment and did the right thing in that brief moment. Right.

David La Torre (2:12:58)
Sure. Sure.

And I didn't even want them to be there.

And by the way, when I left for college, you know how emotional parents get. And my God, we're taking our baby to college and dropping them off for freshman orientation. I told them, I said, I got this. I got this. And I drove myself up there, filled my car up with all my belongings and left. And ⁓ then it was the next phase of my life.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:13:36)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:13:37)
But I would say this to you, ⁓ you never know how trauma manifests itself. And I swear I would never be like my father. And then I had a long-term girlfriend in college starting ⁓ my last two years, junior year, and all through and into my 20s. ⁓ I remember coming home one time for college and

her saying something, I can honestly remember what she said. And it was so ⁓ simple, like nothing controversial or anything. And I fucking tore into her and just said the meanest shit to her. And like, I almost fell over when I was done because it just made me realize that something was wrong with me.

And like I had real anger issues and I sounded like my father talking to my mother and ⁓ it really fucked me up ⁓ for a while. And I definitely think I torpedoed relationships for a while because I did not want to go down that road. And but I will tell you that I deal with it today. I deal with anger issues today. ⁓ You know, I've just started going back to therapy.

⁓ I think a lot of it came as a result of this book. I did therapy about 10 years or so ago and really felt like it helped me, but then I just stopped. And ⁓ since then, in writing this book, like I've had so many things bubble up and ⁓ just kind of create these thoughts that I have. you know, I'm always striving to be a better person. And especially for my daughter.

and you know, ⁓ for my wife and even my son who's out of the house now and doing really, really well, great kid. ⁓ You know, you can never stop trying to get better, I think. And I think that's what we learned in our generation is you can always get better. You can always improve yourself. And I I'm just so lucky that I recognized it in that moment in college. And but it's been a struggle ever since. Like I'm I'm a hothead.

You know, I am like, I'm a hothead. Like I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not a drug. I'm not a drug addict. I'm not this, but I've got anger in me from years of trauma and it's stuff I never dealt with. Never dealt with it until a couple, like I said, about 10 years ago when I did a little bit of therapy on it, but never really dove into it. And now I am. And, uh,

It's just funny being on the outside now, looking at me in college and looking at me as a young guy. Like I just thought, you know, being pissed off or having a hot fuse is just being Italian. And it's not being Italian, you know, it's not a cultural thing. It's a learn thing. And, ⁓ and so I'm trying to grasp and get better at it every day. But man, I just think about.

that moment, that realization of being like my father, it just makes me sick.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:17:06)
Yeah, it sounds like a huge turning point. think it's so understandable though, if you look at your entire foundational beginning of life was built in trauma and, and what, and being a parentified child and, ⁓ what you were exposed to the rage that's probably simmered in you, the hyper, the hypervigilance you lived under, your nervous system was whack, just gone. And you were,

David La Torre (2:17:17)
Right.

Right.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:17:36)
like the Hulk probably, right? Just always simmering, the simmering rage, right? Yeah, but I mean, but yeah, it's like you're always simmering. It's the rage is always there. But there's a reason. There's a reason because all of your formative years were built on this utter, utter traumatic chaos. And so to displace it with that argument with the girlfriend,

David La Torre (2:17:40)
I never thought of it that way. I was always more of a Spider-Man fan myself, but yeah, that's actually a good point.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:18:03)
I think it's amazing that you had the self-awareness in that moment to recognize, okay, this isn't okay.

David La Torre (2:18:08)
I apologized.

I apologized to her immediately and. And. Like, I still feel like I were an apology, you know, you know. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:18:18)
Now that's good. You listen, you're a man who apologized that that is a miracle

itself. Have you have you ever looked into there's a behavioralist BF Skinner and he really goes into the intermittent learning thing. And that I just I was thinking about a little while ago. It's like the once a year or once every maybe twice a year beat down from your dad. It's an intermittent learning thing. The

David La Torre (2:18:25)
But...

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:18:46)
showing up to the games, but really maybe nothing else is an intermittent learning thing. That shit is the most powerful way to learn. And yeah, I mean, like, your story blows me away, But you think about it, though. ⁓ Yeah.

David La Torre (2:18:51)
Right.

Really is, isn't it?

Here's real quick though, real quick.

When you say that to me, like it just feels like, but that's just how it was. Like, I don't feel blown. I still don't identify that way. Like, I just feel like that was just my life. know, I say in my book, ⁓ some people say it's trauma. I just call it life. And so when you say that, but I know what you're saying, Brian, and I agree with you, but I still have a hard time. Like it's just how it was.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:19:17)
Right.

Well, what, and what I mean too, though, is what blows me away is you're here, you're present, you're writing a book, you speak so fondly of your family and your life, right? You've survived. So that's what blows me away. The chaos, I think we all had some bit of chaos. Yours is on another level than mine personally. ⁓ But you survived and you're a functioning guy and you're still working on yourself. And I do think that's

David La Torre (2:19:38)
Yeah.

Right?

and

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:20:00)
could be that Gen X piece. It's just, I'm blown away because I find you remarkable more so than the chaos of your upbringing. That's a whole other thing. Well, I mean, I, and my, my opinion is I think the cast of your upbringing is utterly next level. There's no question about it. But yes, the fact that you have gotten to this point coming from that foundation, because what I was going to say was Gen X.

David La Torre (2:20:06)
Yeah.

I'm gonna tell my kids you said that so we're clear.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:20:30)
You know, we grinded through adulthood, right? Because we just do. We just keep doing. We just keep getting through it. We're just going to, OK, that happened. OK, but we're going to keep going. We're going to keep going. Never stopping, giving ourselves space to acknowledge anything. And so a lot of us, especially ones who grew up with trauma, then we got into adulthood, grinded through adulthood. Now we're midlife. And it's only now where we're like, OK, wait a minute here. And taking that moment to look back at that kid and say,

David La Torre (2:20:50)
Right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:20:59)
Okay, you didn't deserve that. That was totally messed up. And an exam not only examine the root causes of why we are the way we are, but honor that kid, because nobody did. And it's like, you know what, I'm going to look back and acknowledge what happened to you and honor you because no one did. So now I'm going to and taking the time to do that for ourselves. And you wrote a book about it. So you're going into the lion's den.

David La Torre (2:21:03)
Right.

Well said.

It's good point.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:21:27)
You're going back

into reliving some shit that could be a hell of a lot more comfortable to bury it.

David La Torre (2:21:31)
Well, I always had...

I always had that book in me and I've always been a writer. know, when I went to college St. Francis, I had to pick a major and I took English Comp 101 and I discovered that I could write and I ended up being an English Literature major because they didn't have like a comms track there or a journalism major. I ended up getting into journalism when I got out because what the hell is she going to do when you write? So I got my masters in journalism, but I I discovered that I could write and

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:21:50)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:22:05)
always been interested in telling the story, but I just didn't want to go there. And then I thought, well, I'm 54 at the time when my mother died. It's now or never. Like it's literally now or never. ⁓ it was an interesting process. I mean, I had real ⁓ sessions with my sister, just, all right, how do we slot these things? Like, let's remember the years.

When did this happen? How old were we? I don't profess to be accurate with everything and I even say in the forward, I remember everything to the best of my ability, but it all happened and I wish it didn't. So I might be off in some times and some dates, ⁓ but everything we write about happened.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:22:55)
curious, you know, you say you're a hothead, I can relate to that But as you've gone through this journey, some of it's probably fairly cathartic, probably somewhat feeling, but there's probably another side that's enraged you at times too, right? You kind of come through that roller coaster while you're going through this process.

David La Torre (2:23:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Well, I was having a conversation one time with my sister and she was talking about all the things dad did. I said, Caroline, said, think about it. He manipulated us. Like, think about it. Think about this or that, or we bring up something else. was constantly manipulating us and manipulating our mother in just awful ways. And I will tell you though that I do love my father. I mean, I do because

You know, I want to believe that there's good in everybody. And I know that there were moments of good and the trooper was right. Like they didn't start out life like this. They didn't. And ⁓ so there is a grace that I want to extend, Ryan, you know, in a situation like this, it's not always comfortable for me and people don't understand what I say. You know, I still love my father, but

⁓ he was my dad.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:24:19)
That's for you though. That giving Him grace isn't for your Father, it's for you. Because that's part of your healing journey, is being able to give Him grace. And the person who benefits from that is you. So it makes sense. And everyone around Him. Well yeah, because you heal, because it heals a part of you.

David La Torre (2:24:21)
Yeah.

It's a really good point.

Yeah.

Right. Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:24:43)
So you got your degree in English Literature. Where did you go to get your master's in journalism?

David La Torre (2:24:46)
Mm-hmm.

Ball State University, was all set to go to Syracuse School of Newhouse, Newhouse School of Communications. ⁓ And the day after I graduated college, I got a letter and email from Ball State offering me a full graduate assistantship, basically a full ride ⁓ to get my master's degree. And I turned around and did that in 10 months, got my master's in journalism. And then back in those days, you snail mailed all your

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:25:10)
Yeah, cool.

David La Torre (2:25:14)
cover letters and resumes and packets. spent so much damn money sending that shit out. And I got one job interview in Hanover, Pennsylvania. I wasn't necessarily trying to come back to the Harrisburg area. I was going to go wherever I could get a job and Hanover, Pennsylvania. And I remember getting an interview. I wanted to be a sports reporter at the time. I wanted to be the next great sports columnist and guys like, can't pay you much. He goes, I can pay you $16,000 a year. And I took the job and

I thinking, I only made $30,000 a year, it's all I'll need. You know, because I only making 16 at the time. And then a new editor came in there and he saw something in me and said, I want you to cover news. I'm like, I'm not covering news. I want to be a sports columnist. goes, do you like working nights and weekends? I go, absolutely not. Which is what you are as a sports reporter. And you know, I still was dating my college girlfriend at the time, so I didn't really get to see her and we lived in different areas.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:26:06)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:26:14)
He's like, I'll put you on the deadline desk every morning, 730 to 330. And I just took off from there. And he went to a bigger newspaper in New York County, Pennsylvania. And I followed him there. And then I ended up getting back to Harrisburg, my hometown, covering state government for a number of newspapers. And finally, the final newspaper I worked for was the Allentown Morning Call, which was the fourth largest paper in Pennsylvania. And I was covering state government for them.

Then I eventually went into government and became press, on the press staff for Governor Tom Ridge and then ⁓ his successor after 9-11. I went to work one month before 9-11. Yeah. And then Tom Ridge left to be the director of Homeland security under Bush. And ⁓ shortly thereafter, ⁓ I became ⁓ the press secretary to governor Mark Schweiker. Still a friend to this day.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:26:55)
Wow.

So how is it different, ⁓ you're writing for these papers and then you working in government. So what exactly are you doing as a press secretary?

David La Torre (2:27:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Well, you're the spokesperson for the governor. mean, it's sort of like being. Oh, yeah. Well, reporters call me, reporters call me. What's the governor's take on this? What's the governor's take on that? And so you, you know, you could Google me to this day and see Schweikers spokesperson David Latour. I was a deputy for Ridge, so I'd still be identified as a spokesperson for Tom Ridge said this about House Bill 1595.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:27:28)
Are you going out and talking to people on his behalf? you went from driving to being in of people? OK, OK.

Okay.

David La Torre (2:27:55)
whatever

that is at that time. I remember talking about growing up the way I did. I remember like as number two deputy or something like that at the time. And I got called down to a meeting. got to sit in on this important meeting. Budget negotiations were taking place. ⁓ I was a lit major and a journalism major for my master's, but I also

got minors at each stop in political science. I was always interested in politics. And we're sitting at this table and all these hardened political veterans are there and I'm this new guy, you know, and, and, ⁓ Ridges press secretary had turned to me and he said, Dave, did you ever think you'd be here? And I just didn't hesitate. I looked at him and I said, yeah, yeah. And he goes, that's a great answer. And, he didn't understand like,

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:28:51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

David La Torre (2:28:52)
I've seen the worst and this

is not the worst. to this day, as a crisis counselor, ⁓ I'm sorry, but nothing makes me panic. It just doesn't. mean, when I got hired when I was in the private sector to help Penn State during the Jerry Sandusky scandal, got hired about six months after that scandal broke.

The university's communications were shit and the messaging was shit and they had done such an awful job communicating to the rest of the world. And I was included in a team with a PR firm called Edelman, largest privately held public relations firm in the world. And they recruited me and I sort of became the Pennsylvania press face for Penn State during Sandusky. Every university employee had my phone number during that.

scandal because if a reporter called then they're supposed to refer them to me. So just a real quick funny story. I'm checking in the Nittany Lion Inn one night, which is on the universities. It was a university hotel and I'm exhausted. I forgot my wallet in the car. I don't know why. I just had it the middle console and lady's like, could I have your ID? And I'm like, I'm sorry. I left it in the car. goes, I'm going to see your ID. And I just said,

Listen, my name is Dave Latorre and there's my phone number on your pad right there. 717. Baa, baa, baa, baa, baa, baa. And I rattled out, goes, you're Mr. Latorre? I'm like, yes, I am. She says, okay, all right, just bring your wallet in later. Here's your room key, you know? But it's just, I never set out to be a crisis communications counselor. It just kind of grew that way. And I noticed that I don't panic in situations. When people want to, I always say when people want to run out of the room, I walk in.

And ⁓ my sister doesn't do what I do, but we both feel the same way. We've talked about it. Like we don't, she's the same way. Like when other people panic at work, she's very level-headed. Like, I knew you were going to say chauvinist spots.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:30:55)
Do know what that is? It's a trauma response. you know what? No, but you

know what's happening is you guys thrive, physiologically had high cortisol your whole childhood from trauma, which your body becomes addicted to it only it actually then function functions the best with high cortisol. And actually when people heal

David La Torre (2:31:11)
Right, right, right.

Interesting.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:31:22)
and get into normal cortisol levels, that's actually uncomfortable because it's almost like you're going through withdrawal. It's why a lot of people stay in traumatic situations, toxic relationships, abusive relationships, because that's the norm, right? Their body is literally more comfortable with that in that trauma state than the calm, lower normal cortisol. So in crisis situations,

David La Torre (2:31:36)
Bye.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:31:49)
Your cortisol goes up and that's what you know and that's where you thrive. You're you're all of sudden like superhero because you're like, I know how to do this. And you actually calm. We calm because I am the same when things get crazy. I'm so calm because I'm like, I know this drives me crazy. This is my this is my this is where I shine like he might shine with the normal stuff.

David La Torre (2:31:56)
Never thought of that.

Right? do.

Yeah.

Right?

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:32:17)
Give me the chaos. We had a guest, Denise Conde, who talks about this. If you're interested, she talks about this because she came from a pretty chaotic background as well. And she could chase the dopamine through chaos a little bit. But yeah, she talks about how those of us who've gone through trauma in crisis were the most calm and the most like, this is our jam, man.

David La Torre (2:32:17)
Right. Right.

Yeah.

It just is, it just is in a really weird

way. ⁓ And listen, don't want to be disingenuous and say I don't have moments where I panic in life or, know, or, I mean, it's not like that doesn't happen, but when the shit hits the fan and it's really serious and a lot's at stake, like I hyper-focus at that point and I can really kind of see through things that people can't to the other side. I don't think there's, to your point, ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:32:51)
Well, yeah, yeah.

David La Torre (2:33:10)
You apply the science to my whole philosophical take on the fact that I was kind of born to do this. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:33:19)
Literally. You know,

you did a hell of a job for Penn State because they were waffling in the beginning. It was terrible. They had no message.

David La Torre (2:33:26)
It was bad. Yeah,

yeah, it was it was bad. ⁓ And and and we were a good team, myself and Edelman. I mean, some really talented world class people. ⁓ And we had a great working relationship, friends with a lot of those folks today. And I'd like to think that we did do a good job.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:33:49)
tremendous job. I'm a Penn State fan. I didn't go there, but I grew up in the Northeast and Joppa and everything. I went to Penn State football camp as a junior in high school. So, Paterno was there, some Sandusky was there, all those guys. Nothing happened to me for the record. yeah, I watched that pretty closely. How did you go from being a press secretary to crisis communication?

David La Torre (2:33:55)
Right.

Wow.

Right? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Sure,

I opened my own public relations firm after I was out and I've had that for 20 years now. And look, we do plenty of traditional public relations. ⁓ My firm represents a casino in Western Pennsylvania and we represent associations that are law enforcement, things like that. ⁓ through the years, I've taken on a number of crisis situations with clients and it just sort of developed.

I mean, because when I was in the governor's office, you deal with crisis every day and you learn to, you kind of learn the whole tricks of the trade. Like we had something called, some people might remember it in 2002, the Que Creek mine rescue in August of 2002. We're coming up on one year anniversary of 9-11. America's really still, I mean, in the economic drag and emotional drag of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

and these nine miners get trapped in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. And I'm the governor's press secretary and I fly out and we're there for four days, ⁓ you know, trying to dig these guys out. ⁓ Governor showed tremendous leadership. I was the only member of senior staff that was there for four days and just helping to message through the whole thing. And you learn a lot there. I learned a lot.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:35:22)
We

David La Torre (2:35:42)
on how to handle a crisis in a situation like that. I tell people all the time when it comes to media training and interacting with reporters, I talked a lot with reporters then. I'm so glad I did because reporters handle a lot of crisis situations. That's what they cover. And I knew enough to know that I didn't know enough. And I found a couple of reporters that I really respected and trusted.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:36:00)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:36:09)
And they gave me good tips. Sometimes I listened and sometimes I didn't. Not because I didn't agree with them, but sometimes a reporter requests more things than you can provide. And I learned a lot through that whole exercise. And thank God all nine of those miners were rescued or that crisis could have been a lot worse. And then you never know how it's going to end up. But I learned a lot through that. And that really kind of set a template for me afterwards when I put my own shingle out.

and form Latorre Communications, which is a company I've had for over 20 years now based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I've just developed that niche. And to this day, I've got a number of clients whose names I could never tell you who have had a crisis that I've helped them while maintaining strict confidentiality. And I'm just really proud of that record. And somebody calls me, hey, it is funny, though.

I've gotten lots of calls where people say, I've got a crisis and it's like not a crisis, you know, and I'll tell them like, it's not a crisis and here's what you need to do and hey, this one's on me and you don't owe me anything, but I would do this, this and this and you're going to be fine. You know, but to them, they don't know the difference. you know, but ⁓ but there's been plenty of crises that I've worked on through the years and I've just thankfully I've been able to develop that reputation as just a, I think a

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:37:11)
Thank you. ⁓

Right. Right.

David La Torre (2:37:35)
a calm counselor when it's really needed.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:37:38)
Did you start the company after working at Penn State?

David La Torre (2:37:43)
I worked at another, no, no, ⁓ I didn't work for Penn State. I was a consultant for them. I was not an employee. I had already had my firm and my firm, I partnered with Edelman to represent Penn State. We went up and pitched Penn State to handle their, they had another PR firm there from the outside at the time and they were moving on from them. They wanted to bring somebody fresh in to kind of get, kind of hit the reset button.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:37:53)
You

David La Torre (2:38:12)
on everything and we got hired. So was basically a consultant for them, but never an employee. And this was while I had my firm. So my firm started in 2005 and the Penn State scandal happened in 2011.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:38:33)
So was that your first big scandal or had you had something?

David La Torre (2:38:36)
⁓

I don't know that I'll ever have a scandal bigger than that. Like that's a big one. It's an international story. Like I'm being called by reporters in Australia. And that's how it was doing the Que Creek mine rescue, by the way. ⁓ So I had that reference point, ⁓ you know, in dealing with the media and all of sudden Geraldo Rivera shows up on the, on at the rescue site and setting up tents and wanting to interview your

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:38:41)
Yeah. Pretty big. Yeah.

Yeah.

David La Torre (2:39:06)
your governor and blah, blah, blah, blah. know, Geraldo was really brash at that time. And I'm like, yeah, all right, I'm going to put on my show. And then somebody came to me and said, he's going to sandbag your governor. He's going to sandbag the governor. He's going to have some labor guys on and they're going to trash the governor while he's on the air. And I just remember walking over to Geraldo producer, who was his brother. I said, I'm putting my guy on. hear you're going to, you guys are going to smoke and blah, blah, blah, blah. And he walks over to Geraldo.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:39:12)
Mm-hmm.

David La Torre (2:39:34)
over. goes, what's the problem? I explained it to him. He said, you put your guy on my show and I'll make him a star. And he walked away. And I put him on the show and he did not sandbag him. That's he was at Fox News back then. Yeah, that's when he was with Fox News. Now he think he does CNN. He does CNN panel stuff. don't know. He's older now, but he's still very sharp. He's still very sharp.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:39:45)
That's good. So, Geraldo's a man of his word, maybe. I mean, Geraldo, that's such a blast from the past. ⁓ Yes. Yeah. Yes. I don't know where he is now. Does he? Okay.

Yeah, he

is. Did you kind of, so 9-11 happened and you're, I think you say you're a month or so into the, did you get kind of thrown to the wolves? Were you speaking for the governor

David La Torre (2:40:06)
Yes, one month, I was there one month. Yes.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:40:13)
then?

David La Torre (2:40:13)
I'd only been with the governor's office for a month. like I wasn't a major decision maker or, you know, in really serving a one of those key leadership roles during 9 11, just to be clear about that. But the thing that I got asked to staff the governor one night when there was going to be a memorial service for the families of the flight 93 victims who crashed in Somerset County.

So.

I remember going to, there's a resort there called Seven Springs Ski Resort and all the relatives of those killed in Flight 93 were staying there throughout the process. And there's going to be this memorial service. And I remember going to this room where the service was going to be held and looking at all the family members of the Flight 93 victims going like, basically thinking like, what the fuck am I doing here?

I mean, like it was the most dread I've ever felt because you feel helpless. And I remember going to one of the rows of the chairs and because they were kind of all packed and the governor wasn't there, so I wasn't working yet. And I saw this little girl with long blonde hair laying down across two chairs with her head on an older woman's

And I don't know who she was to this day. And I just felt like I just said to her, said, can I get you something? And she said a Coke. She wanted a Coke. And I remember going to get this girl a Coke and getting a, finding a straw and putting a straw on it. And I walked over to her and I don't know if this older woman was her grandmother or aunt. I don't know. And, ⁓

I remember handing it to her and she said thank you and she put it down on the ground and she laid back down and never touched the coke. ⁓

I've always wondered what happened to I was wondering what happened to that little girl. I can't believe it's been 25 years. It'll be 25 years in September. And I tie it back to, well anyway, I get a call like I have to come back to Harrisburg immediately. And...

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:42:40)
⁓ Yeah.

David La Torre (2:42:55)
somebody else is going to come, the governor can't make it tonight and somebody else is going to come in his stead and you just need to get in a car and you need to drive to Harrisburg right away. And I remember thinking, he's going to Washington. And that was the night that Bush announced that he would be the new Homeland Security Director, the first ever Homeland Security Director. And to be surrounded in that moment by history, ⁓ just was so

It made everything else, not in my life, not to talk about my childhood or anything, but just made everything just so trivial at that moment. Because there were these immense moments in history and you went right there and you feel like a witness to it. ⁓ That's what made Que Creek, the Que Creek mine rescue so impactful is that that rescue site was a mere miles from the site of Flight 93.

And the families reached out to the families of the mine families at the time. And our governor was on site and he was the lieutenant governor during 9 11. And now he was the governor because Tom Ridge had to resign and go to Washington and. ⁓

We needed a win. America needed a win. And when those nine miners came up alive, like something changed for us as a country then. And I think the world even felt a little bit better because it's just been such a stark, like it's hard for people who weren't born back then. And it's really hard for me to wrap my heads around, head around the fact that kids in college today were not alive during 9-11. But it's hard for some people to get their head around the fact that we really needed a win there.

that things were so bad, morale was bad, the economy was in the tank, the economy tanked after 9-11, like everybody was down. And of all places, mere mile from where a plane crash, were the first fighters in the global war on terrorism. ⁓

I was fought in the skies above Pennsylvania that day when those people made sure that that plane did not crash into, forbid, the White House or Capitol Hill. And here in that same spot, ⁓ these nine miners are rescued. And that's something that stuck with me forever. And ⁓ I just had a meeting up there, out there, because my former boss, the governor, is going to do an event.

to mark the 25th anniversary at the school in Shanksville. Shanksville was where the crash site is. And he's going to do an event with a couple people from back then. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:45:34)
I, I...

David La Torre (2:45:44)
the 25th anniversary, what it was like back then, what everybody was thinking and, you know, something that they want to record for posterity so people remember it. And it's just hard for me to believe it was 25 years ago. And I went out to that meeting like two weeks ago. And it was the first time I could stop at Flight 93, the National Historic Site, and take it all in.

And if you've never been there, and a lot of people, it's right off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. And if you're listening to the show and you're driving down to Pennsylvania Turnpike and you pass the Somerset exit, or you're coming on the Somerset exit, that's right where Flight 93 Memorial is. And it is so moving. I highly, highly recommend it.

does a great job teaching kids about what happened that day above the skies and after the crash and how the site was handled in. ⁓ It is so moving. That if you can't be moved by, you are not human. And I was just really glad that I stopped by there, but you know, I don't know about you guys, but I look at 9 11 is dread for me every.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:47:09)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:47:09)
Like

it's dread. is. I can't think about the horrific way that people died that didn't deserve it. Not that anybody deserves it, but I people making decisions and jump off the buildings, hundred, a hundred stories in the air rather than burn up. And those people on that flight 93 who knew they were going to die and decided to stop these guys and, and, and knew that they weren't going to survive. And I just,

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:47:24)
Yeah.

David La Torre (2:47:38)
I'm so in all of them, in all of them, all these years later. It's just really hard for me to, I just can't stand September 11th every year. And strangely, my son was born September 10th and we had just had his, ⁓ it was two, we just had his second birthday party the night before. It's crazy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:47:53)
Mm.

It is crazy because it's

such a normal, beautiful thing to do. And then the next day is one of the worst days in American history. I feel like I've tried to describe it to the kids of because just when we were talking, you were talking about it, like I have a physical reaction when I talk about 9-11. I can feel it in my body and I get tears in my eyes. And I don't think it's a PTSD, but I physiologically have a physiological reaction because it is.

David La Torre (2:48:16)
I totally agree. Yeah. Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:48:30)
I feel like I think about something related to 9-11, least once a week, randomly. Something will pop in my head. I just think for those of us who... Brian was actually supposed to be arriving into the bottom of one of the towers around that time, and he had changed his meeting to the next day. else... My buddy got in when the first plane hit and heard the rumble and he's like...

David La Torre (2:48:34)
Mm-hmm

My god. Wow.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:48:55)
I'm outta here and headed back to Jersey. But he was supposed to have a meeting with Lego on 9-11 and changed it to 9-12. But then ⁓ his team, he was part of a team that went into the city the next day, right? Within a couple days. Yeah, we set up, I think it was Pier 94 in Manhattan. It was the D &E collection ⁓ spot. I'm in IT. We blew out a bunch of phones and computers and little rooms and for people to bring in toothbrushes and...

David La Torre (2:48:55)
Oof.

Smart move.

Wow.

Wow.

Right?

Mm.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:49:25)
in homes and stuff so they could try to match DNA. Little did anyone know it was all dust. Right. That's when there was hope. But he was gone for a few days. It was

David La Torre (2:49:25)
Mm.

Right. Yeah, the whole

I remember

people had photos on the walls like this part, my loved ones missing. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:49:39)
Yes, missing.

was there and that's what the scene was, as we'd walk out, because we went in and we're like in this pier, which is really just a big, long office building tube in a sense. And then you come out to just kind of see what's going on. And you're right, they had billboards, people's pictures, people crying. It was crazy, man. It's, it's horrific. deny it all, though. Like when we went to Manhattan, we were in New York a few months ago or a few years ago.

David La Torre (2:49:51)
Right? Right?

Right?

Crazy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:50:09)
And I find it interesting. think I could go to the thing you're talking about, the memorial for the plane, because I'm detached. we went to, what's it called, the Freedom Tower or whatever? We went to the 9/11 Memorial where you go inside and all that. And my older two and I went in, but Brian, he couldn't do it. He couldn't go in. It's not, I don't know if I can.

David La Torre (2:50:12)
Right?

Right. Yeah, sure.

And I perfectly understand

it. I don't want to go to it. I mean, right? Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:50:31)
I don't need to see a memorial. I lived it. And then New York's

my city. I grew up 45 miles outside of Manhattan. used to go there as a kid and sneak in as teens, go back as a, you know, it's my town. I don't need the memorial for me personally, but I get it. I get it. They did a wonderful job. I'm still pissed, I guess.

David La Torre (2:50:46)
It's soup.

Right.

It's so sad, oh, I'm sure,

right? It's so sad that, you know, like you would want, like I think it's a seminal moment of our generation, of our generation's lives, is 9-11. It used to be something very positive. I always thought it was the fall of the Berlin Wall. I always thought like that's a seminal moment of my lifetime and world history. And now I feel like it's 9-11 and that sucks.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:51:06)
Okay.

Thank

Yeah.

David La Torre (2:51:20)
just really sucks.

It just has so much impact on, I mean, let's face it, and I'm not here to talk politics, but American foreign policy is so much of it was dictated by that day. Since then, it changed the world. It changed the world. that's crazy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:51:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

I love how you refer to those people in the plane being the first fighter back. That's fucking brilliant, man. I love that because it's so spot on. Those people made that choice instead of just riding it out to see, let's see where it goes. No, fuck that. Let's go get these guys in. They were the first. I love how you frame it.

David La Torre (2:51:59)
They were not my words.

Those are not my words. Those were Governor Mark Schweiker's words. The first Patriots, the war on terror began with the first Patriots fighting in the skies above Pennsylvania. Yeah, and he's right. he just, he goes and he speaks there. He's been there on multiple anniversaries and ⁓ he just always is pitch perfect ⁓ at events like that. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:52:12)
Brilliant.

David La Torre (2:52:29)
Got a couple of speeches from Shanksville on YouTube. Mark Schweiker, highly recommend people look them up if they want to learn more about history and see some of the speeches that were given. ⁓ Mark has a way, the governor has a way, I still call him governor, has a way of really wordsmithing impactful moments. And that was one of them. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:52:52)
Yeah. Absolutely. You was wild

when we were there setting up the pier. Giuliani rolled in with his entourage and. You know, it was it was a powerful moment back then. It was like, yeah, and it was like, geez, this this aura. And I got pretty close to him. I don't know how close I was, but I could see him. No problem. But that aura. And I bet you've had that experience, some of that aura like you're describing with the governor and.

David La Torre (2:53:00)
Yeah.

America's mayor. America's mayor.

Right.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah, no question. Yes, especially at that time. ⁓ But yeah, you feel like you're surrounded by history and you're in a big moment with people who are being asked to meet the moment. they don't always succeed, but I give my former boss a lot of credit. He pulled it off.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:53:22)
Archers and life energy.

Even like, even George Bush making the first pitch out at Yankee Stadium shortly thereafter.

David La Torre (2:53:56)
in a full flak jacket, right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:53:58)
Yeah, totally. But it was like,

you know what? We're moving on. America needed everything. We needed everything. And I think it's like to your point that there's kids that really have no concept at all. People have no concept. And you can't even explain it to them because there was you just can't like to understand. It was all of us. We were we were more united than ever. And we all needed all the things.

David La Torre (2:54:05)
Right.

You can't.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:54:25)
All the things to get through it. we're divided. Well, no, no. Okay. Yeah, it's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah.

David La Torre (2:54:28)
Now we're more divided than ever, but yeah, yeah. But I'll tell you this,

that's like when I talked about earlier about, know, like nobody in my generation really, or our generation, none of my high school buddies really wanted to go into the military. Because there just wasn't a lot going on and that all changed on 9-11. That all changed on 9-11.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:54:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So you were talking about, we covered your professional life, but during that time, you you graduate from college, you're a journalist building your career. And I know earlier you had said you're remarried, I think. So did you get married during those early years out of college?

David La Torre (2:54:52)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

⁓

That would have been...

2000, I wasn't married very long. I wasn't married very long and I would, I could, it didn't have anything to do with my trauma from childhood. It was just a bad fit. The only thing of note that came from it was my son, who was just the greatest son anybody could ever ask for. But I tell you what, I will tell you that my

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:55:17)
Okay, okay.

David La Torre (2:55:42)
experience with my father pitting me and my sister against my mother and ridiculing her. I think my father could tell you or my son could tell you that he's never heard me say a negative word about his mother. Never. And ⁓ as it should be. ⁓ You know, I can't stand when I hear parents putting kids in the middle of something like that. They didn't ask for that. They're not equipped to deal with it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:02)
Yeah, absolutely.

David La Torre (2:56:12)
And so I'd like to think that part of that helped me really kind of understand early that regardless of my personal feelings in a relationship, this young boy does not need to hear how I feel about certain things. He only needs to hear that he's loved and he should love his mother and his father and they both love him.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:37)
Yep, absolutely. you guys, ⁓ did you co-parent, were you were involved in his life regularly?

David La Torre (2:56:39)
Yeah.

Oh, yeah. He was with me most of the time. Yeah, we had 50-50 unwritten, but then it got to the point where it had to be written and he was with us most of the time. But, you know, we made the best of a tough situation and my son rightly loved his mother and he was a really good son to his mother. And I'm just so proud of him.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:56:48)
Okay.

David La Torre (2:57:13)
and I'm just so proud of the man he's become.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:15)
Well, and I'm sure I'm assuming, but I could be wrong. But through raising him, parts of you healed as you raised him.

David La Torre (2:57:25)
I don't know, I don't think of it in those terms though. ⁓ I just don't know. ⁓ I never looked at it as like I feel better about, I just never looked at it. Honestly, I don't know that I was, I don't know that I wanted to deal with any of it. I don't know that I wanted to think about any of it. I just had it over here and I had moved on from it. I didn't.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:57:50)
Okay.

David La Torre (2:57:51)
I didn't know that I didn't move on from it and it started to manifest itself as we discussed, but I felt like I had moved on from it and I didn't think about it in those ways. And honestly, my grandparents or my parents were older when Gus was born and they actually had a good relationship with them and they actually were good grandparents because you know, they were harmless at this point. My dad wasn't doing well. My mother wasn't.

They both passed and it was not pretty. think the years of self-abuse really caught up with them in sad and painful ways for them. But they were good grandparents. They couldn't do any damage at that point. All they want to do is spend time with their grandchildren. And I afforded in that. It's so funny.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:58:47)
wonderful. I really that's wonderful that you were able to do that.

David La Torre (2:58:52)
It's so funny though, like I got along with my old man, like we had our moments where he didn't want to speak to me for whatever ⁓ issue he had with me as I became an adult. God knows what the situation was, but we got along and I was there when he passed, but he had done a will and ⁓ we read the will and the will said he was leaving nothing to me and my sister.

which is pretty interesting because he didn't have anything to leave behind. But that was just my dad in a nutshell. Like one minute he's up, the other minute he's down. I tried to be, and his and my sister tried to be, provide as much, show as much grace as we could. And he did not die alone and he did not die hated and ⁓

It's like I said earlier, I don't have tell you who's my dad.

GenX Adulting Podcast (2:59:52)
But again, that grace, that being able to say that is a gift for you. You can say he did not die alone. He did not die hated. That brings you that sense of peace. So, and as far as him with the will, I mean, he was consistent at least like he still had to do his last jab at you. You know? So, but okay, so then you- I do think just to add to that, though I do think it's more than a gift to yourself. I think it's a gift to your children to see you as a-

David La Torre (2:59:58)
Right. Right.

Right.

Hahahaha

that man. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:00:22)
good dad. So it isn't just a self serving thing. And I know you're not suggesting that but I do think it's a wonderful, different model. You broke the cycle. A good man. ⁓

David La Torre (3:00:23)
Right.

Right.

I think, right, I

think about it differently. ⁓ I think about parenting differently to follow up on that. so I'll text my son and my daughter several times during the week, just tell them I love them. You know, and just, I just want them to know. Cause you never know, we're not guaranteed one more day. We think we are, but you know, I want them, I don't want there to be any confusion.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:00:47)
Mm-hmm.

Are they receptive to that or do they think it's kind of corny? ⁓

David La Torre (3:01:03)
I think they're receptive to it. think

it's probably a little corny to my 14 year old because everything I do is corny. you know, anybody out there who is a father of a daughter, you are their hero until a certain age. And then when that age comes, you embarrass them just when you walk into a room and have done nothing, but just walking into that room is embarrassing to them.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:01:10)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David La Torre (3:01:31)
And so I understand that and I know that's part of the thing, but I love that. I love my daughter, man. She is just the coolest little kid. And but, you know, I think my son appreciates it now that he's older and I'm just very, very lucky with children. Very, very lucky.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:01:35)
Yes.

Yeah.

I'm here to tell you we have a 25 year old daughter and so they do go through that but then he's. ⁓

David La Torre (3:01:55)
Has she apologized to you guys yet? I

hear that when they get to 25, they apologize. I know how bad I was. just want you to know you were right and I'm so sorry.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:02:01)
Thank

You know when we both of our older two came home at two different times, they went away to college and they came home and were like, thank you for giving us a good childhood because they were exposed to people who didn't get a good childhood. And like their biggest issue was they drove a hand-me-down car. you know, that's their adversity in life, you know? So it made them realize, okay, you guys gave us a real... And they at different stages.

David La Torre (3:02:13)
Yeah.

other people.

⁓ my gosh.

right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:02:31)
Our

older son first went away and came home one day and said, thank you. And then our daughter. So that was the thank you and the appreciation. But I will tell you, even though there's a brief moment where she might find you embarrassing, then they get older. And my daughter thinks of him as her hero 100%. Like that, that comes right back around again. that close. Nice. And I love being a dad to a daughter. Yeah, I like being a dad in general, the boys and I have different relationships, but the daughters, it's a unique.

David La Torre (3:02:46)
Yeah.

It makes it all cool, doesn't it? It makes it all cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:03:00)
She's your little... I was just, I was thinking as much as you compartmentalized your childhood as you were raising your son, you still did different. You still, you still did. it, as much as it wasn't there, was there enough for you to be aware that you're going to do different. So it was over here, but it was still guiding you to not do that. You know, so it's the happiest. Yeah. You still did different. Now, so you remarried. So when did you meet your wife?

David La Torre (3:03:06)
Yeah. ⁓

No

That's a good point.

That's a good point. I had not thought of that. I had not thought of it that way. That's good point.

That would have been, hmm, so we've been married 18 years and you're gonna ask me to do math. so it was around 2006, somewhere in there. And you know, the whole deal, you date for a few years and we had both been married previously. you know, it was then we had the adult wedding where nobody was really invited and it was small. And we actually went to Las Vegas, just the two of us.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:03:36)
you

we got

married there. Yeah. Yeah.

David La Torre (3:03:56)
I just had a little fun went to Las Vegas.

Nobody was invited that much to the chagrin of her mother. My mother-in-law, she couldn't understand that, but we're like, we're just going to go have some fun. And that's what we did. Yeah, and Stella came in so we married. He was born three years later in 2011 and now she's 14 and.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:04:07)
Nice, nice. And then you have your daughter.

David La Torre (3:04:25)
She's like any ⁓ American teenage girl. She loves wrestling. That's crazy. Wrestling, I'm just kidding, but wrestling is so popular. Girls wrestling is so popular here in Pennsylvania and really catching on around the country. She loves to wrestle and play field hockey and she cares about her grades and she makes it, you know, outside of the temperamental issues, she makes parenting pretty easy. Yeah. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:04:51)
That's awesome. That's awesome. Now, what

about you and your sister? Are you guys close?

David La Torre (3:04:56)
Yeah, she lives in Chicago area. She's actually getting married ⁓ in August. This will be her second. I'll be careful on how much I say about my sister, but we are close. ⁓ Can't wait to see her. Love the guy she's marrying, an English bloke. ⁓ Really good dude. ⁓ Can't understand him half the time, though he's speaking the Queen's English, I can't understand him.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:05:16)
Mmm.

Nice.

David La Torre (3:05:25)
And, ⁓ but he's a fantastic guy. They're getting married, ⁓ in Chicago in August and just really looking forward to seeing them. And, we, we, and you know, my sister and I have had our ups and downs through the years. don't always communicate well. And I think, I think there was some trauma involved there and maybe just kind of avoiding each other a little bit, but our relationship I think is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:05:35)
That's very cool.

David La Torre (3:05:54)
better than ever and She make a point in communicating and sharing information My sister's a bit of a world traveler, which I really love about her and anywhere I have to go anytime I have to go somewhere She's always got like ten great ideas for me and call this person They can give you great ideas on where you should stop and maybe you know, blah blah blah she's always got great great kernels of in travel information, which I love and and You know in a lot of ways

You know, she really helped me with the book, really helped me remember things, ⁓ really kind of slot things in their proper time places, told me shit I didn't know that she never told anybody. And, you know, and I really needed her to be okay with me writing it. I needed that. I, and, you know, I'd like to say I wouldn't have written it if she said, no, I don't know. But I mean,

It was really important to get her sign off on it. And then she was very, very helpful with the whole thing. ⁓ I'm just really lucky to be her brother.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:07:05)
think it's amazing. You guys are like two survivors who are now kind of went on a little healing journey together and have supported each other because I'm sure helping you with the book also. She went through some stuff having to relive and go through when your mom passed in 2024. Did that just trigger this desire to write soda? Yeah, it's like

David La Torre (3:07:11)
Yeah, in a way, yeah, it really was.

Me? Yes. Yes. That

was like, remember thinking like, if I'm ever going to do this, now's the time to do it. And you you need to get sign off from your wife on that because it's a, ⁓ you got to be selfish with your time. ⁓ And ⁓ my wife has been incredibly supportive of the whole situation. She doesn't want to read it. She wanted to be part of the reading, like going through it while I was writing it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:07:44)
Yes.

David La Torre (3:07:58)
which I totally respected. mean, who would want to read it? You know, I mean, at that stage and knowing, you know, knowing, you know, knowing this is how her husband grew up and I think there'll be a time when she wants to read it, but I totally respected her whole position of you just write, okay, I'll take care of things and not that I, you know, it.

I just receded from family, but I needed that time. It's like a second job. It is a second job. And so I, you know, people are like, how can you write? The first, ⁓ first draft is 130,000 words. And ⁓ I work with a consultant on it who's a former agent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you got to get it to about 90,000. That's, that's a sweet spot. Yeah, that's a sweet spot. That actually wasn't that hard.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:08:48)
⁓

David La Torre (3:08:53)
Cause I overwrote on purpose knowing that I'm probably going to have to trim it back. And I always kind of, you're sort of just marked off in my mental process. Like these are areas that I would probably look at cutting. And, I just kind of knew a groove of writing a thousand words a day minimum. If I hit a thousand and I had a tight day, like I'm up at 5 a.m. writing it, trying to pound a thousand words out.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:08:56)
to edit it.

Okay.

How many pages is that, roughly?

David La Torre (3:09:22)
That'll

be about 300 somewhere in there. Average size of a novel.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:09:30)
I mean a thousand words. A day. Kind of say damn to your, you're a typer.

David La Torre (3:09:33)
⁓ yeah. Thousand words a day. Yeah. Yeah, but when you're

a writer, you don't think about it like I don't think 1000 is a lot to write a day at all. It's just about being consistent. Yeah, pretty much. You.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:09:47)
It's coming through you. Like once you made that decision,

it's like it's there and it's just the writing is the tool to get it out. It's just flowing. That's a beautiful part of it. So how long did you work on it?

David La Torre (3:09:54)
Right? Right.

Probably a year and a half. And then you put together the whole book proposal and that process has been as hard as writing a book. From here on out, writing the book, I've learned is the easy part about getting a book published. You think it's the hard part, like people are like, oh, wow, holy shit, you wrote 90,000 words. I go, actually it was 130,000. But that was the easy part.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:10:02)
Yeah.

you

David La Torre (3:10:30)
You know, the hard part is, you you want to sell it to a major publishing house, you got to hire the right agent. And, you know, I'm going through all that stuff right now and it's just not that easy. It's not that easy. ⁓ But I've got lots of good signs and ⁓ things are headed in the right direction. And I'm really pleased right now with the whole, with the progress that we're making on it. And I can't wait to share it with you someday.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:10:56)
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I can't wait to read it. So now does your Yes. Yes. Yes. Curious. Is it fiction? Or is it like first? It's your This is my autobiography type of thing. Yeah. Okay.

David La Torre (3:10:58)
There's so many things you don't know that you can only say so many things on a show, you know, like there's so many.

it's real. It's yeah, it's it's it is a memoir. Yeah,

it is a memoir. And it's written from I, it's first person. I not David.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:11:20)
Okay, cool. Now

your company, can your company have any part of promoting the book or is it that

David La Torre (3:11:26)
Mm-hmm.

sure, I mean I've got 20 years experience in marketing. mean there would certainly be ⁓ an opportunity that we would do and we would use every contact we have to try and help sell the book. I think it's a powerful, think we have a, most authors don't know step one about marketing and we've got a whole infrastructure built that would certainly be helpful in that. That makes it

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:11:52)
Yeah.

David La Torre (3:11:56)
that really made the book more attractive to people. because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, art's great and everything, know, great writing is great, but you know, books got to sell.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:12:01)
So it sounds like.

yeah. Absolutely. It sounds like that's what you're working on now is because your hope is 2027, right?

David La Torre (3:12:16)
Yeah, that's exactly right. I just wish I

had a date. I wish I could sell you like January 2027, but I mean, it's a whole process. mean, and then you got to go through, you're never really done writing it because there's editing. There's editing and you maybe need to add this, but every step of the way the book's been made better and I can't argue.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:12:36)
You know, it's got to be when you get to that point where it's out there and it's on the shelves and the feeling is going to be just euphoric, I think, for so many reasons.

David La Torre (3:12:41)
Ugh.

Sort of scary in a way too, because it's the whole, ⁓ it's my whole family history. I'm bearing it, I'm laying it bare right there. And ⁓ that's why I won't independently publish. It has to go through a major publishing house or I'm not gonna release it. But I'm at that point now where everything's looking really good and I feel great about the whole situation.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:12:53)
Yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

David La Torre (3:13:13)
Yeah, people like, why

wouldn't you independently publish? I'm like, I'm not tearing my family's heart out of my family's history. And I don't have any problems with people independently publishing. But when it's something that personal, I want to be able to get it to the widest audience possible if I'm going to do it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:13:32)
It's like if you're taking the risk, you need to go the whole way with it.

David La Torre (3:13:34)
Right,

that's the way and I think it's good enough too. I think and that's not being brash or cocky or I just know that it's good enough. I know it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:13:44)
So

listen, if this time you've spent with us is any indication, I have no question it's going to be a phenomenal book and a success. And you know, I have a theory about ⁓ when you create something, once you put it out there, it almost doesn't belong to you anymore. It belongs to the consumer and however they interpret it, it's there. Now it's yours. It doesn't have anything to do with you anymore, good or bad.

David La Torre (3:13:49)
⁓ very kind of you.

That's a good point. Yeah, it's now everybody's. I think that's a great approach. Now it's yours. Yeah.

Right, right. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:14:09)
It's like music. You may not like it,

you may like it, but it really isn't my business because I created it and I put it out there and now it belongs to you. It freezed you a little bit. yeah, yeah. mean, so as I mentioned, I want to have you back on when it's time to put out the book. If you'd to come back on. And before I ask my last question, I just want to make that clear to listeners is you will hear more about.

David La Torre (3:14:16)
I absolutely agree with that. Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. Yeah.

Sure, and I would love to do that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:14:36)
David's book. this isn't the end of the story. We are going to read. Yes, please. I love that. That's awesome. That's perfect. I love it. That's awesome.

David La Torre (3:14:39)
Can I tell you the title of the book? Soda.

That's the title of the book. And people, people don't

know why it says it's soda. And then they then they understand pretty quickly. And for years, I knew that for years, it's chapter 10. For years, I knew that was the name of the book for years, like because I'll never forget that moment. Never forget it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:14:58)
Chapter 10.

So

it's been sitting with you for a while then. And it was more just when your mom passed, you finally felt you could go for it.

David La Torre (3:15:09)
Yeah, yeah.

I felt like

I had to, I felt like, you you can talk about the personal medicinal qualities of getting that book out of you. But I really want people and, you know, looking forward to having that conversation with you when the time comes, I want people to realize they don't have to become like their parents and you can become better and you can break that cycle, which we've talked a little bit about.

you know, as generation X kids breaking that trauma cycle of growing up in that generation where parents were pretty carefree with their parenting responsibilities. And, and I just want people to realize, like, if I can do it, like, I'm not, I'm nobody special. And I truly mean that, you can do it too. And, ⁓ drugs are still prevalent issue in our society. They just take on different forms. ⁓

By the way, cocaine's as dangerous as ever because now it's laced with fentanyl and it's still widely used. But now you have fentanyl, you have opiates. mean, drug use continues to be a scourge for families across cities and like we saw in my situation, suburban America. And so I think there's a lesson. It's not just a Gen X story, but it's an important

important story about Gen X, Generation X. And I talk about Generation X a lot in my book and what it was like to grow up at that time. And ⁓ how in many ways being a Gen X kid saved me and growing up with the pop culture of Gen X was so important to me and how it all fits and weaves into the story. ⁓ But it's more than that. it's it's it's it. I hope it gives some sort of a road map.

kids right now who are going through what I went through or adults dealing with trauma that I dealt with in some similar fashion that you can get out on the other side here.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:17:18)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I think that it will resonate with so many people and help people feel seen and not alone. And that's your intention. And so much with ⁓ what we put out in the world, intention matters. And intention affects success. I'm a believer in that, you know, because and so you're putting it out there with this intention to help people. in addition to it being a riveting story.

David La Torre (3:17:26)
Right.

Right?

So true.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:17:46)
So it's interesting. You know, it's an interesting story that will hold people's attention in general, but it's going to affect a lot of families because you're right. The drug crisis is still going on. It's just it's just so it's more insidious and quiet. It's circled back. Yeah. I'm sure the Harrisburg area, you are your ground zero for the opioid epidemic. Yeah. Targeted communities. Yeah. And you're right. Coke is back. Like it went away for a while.

David La Torre (3:17:47)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

many ways. yeah. I'm telling you, it's rough. It's rough.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:18:15)
It's back. It's back. It's in the frats. It's back and it's very dangerous and it is.

David La Torre (3:18:15)
Yeah.

When you

hear stories about people actually testing Coke before they use it for fentanyl and it's like, I can't even imagine that you would trust a test for something like that. Like just don't do it. Just don't do it. Like you would really, okay, so that tested negative and you're going to trust that and then you're going to do that? Like, no thanks, man. mean, yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:18:24)
yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

No, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Do you have any questions?

do. I actually have two. I'm curious. When you went to the got involved at Penn State, what was your guys playbook for? you know, you kind of go in, you're like, all right, this thing's they're tripping all over themselves. What's your what's your move there?

David La Torre (3:18:51)
Yeah.

Right.

Well, two things. ⁓ One of the most important things in a crisis situation is really, and it sounds kind of counterintuitive, but to be responsive to the media. And Penn State for years had been really obstinate and they didn't need anybody and they didn't need to talk to the media and they would talk to the media on their own terms and we're Penn State and we're a big shot, blah, blah, blah, blah,

I made sure we returned phone calls and emails and, hey, I can't get you that answer. I apologize. We just don't have a comment on that. It's all about building relationships in a lot of ways and showing people that you're respectful of their time. I was a journalist and I like to think that's very helpful to me in my current profession. And I would know when a reporter feels slighted. If I call you at 9 a.m. and say I'm on a five o'clock deadline and I need an answer on such and such.

and you make me wait all day and call me back at 4 55 and say, I'm sorry, we're not going to comment. I'm only human and I'm going to have a reaction to that. And it likely doesn't lead to a really a story that might be somewhat innocuous could end up being even worse because listen, everybody gets mad on the job. Nobody's perfect people. How dare you make me feel disrespected. So a lot of what we do is

⁓ Be respectful of a reporter's time. Be responsive. Answer when you can. And then be honest when you can't comment and let them know. But if I know I'm not gonna get an answer, I know that I need to get back to them before lunchtime. It's little things like that that are so important during a crisis because then when people are talking about the crisis and

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:20:46)
Yeah, yeah.

David La Torre (3:20:54)
are being asked and doing panels. Well hey, Penn State has been responsive. They've really stepped up. They're getting back to us. They're giving us information when they can. They can't always give us something, but they try. You be as transparent as you can. Transparent's a bad word to use during a crisis because it means something different to everyone else. So I try not to use the word transparent. Don't ever promise transparency because you can never be transparent enough.

⁓ for everybody and I think that's a fair criticism. So don't say you're going to be transparent because there's going to be moments where people say you're not. So what we try and do is answer as many questions as we can. If we can't answer it, we'll tell you we can't answer it, but we're going to be honest up front about it. And I thought those were really some really important points. ⁓ honestly, ⁓ trying to find out in a crisis who's the best person to be a spokesperson.

that works at Penn State that is credible. Like that's the person you're looking for. It's not always whether it's a company or a Penn State, it's not always the president or the CEO. mean, sometimes they can't, they're really bad on camera. And I want somebody who's a good messenger. you know, we're fortunate in Penn State. I want to be careful how I talk about a client because it's still...

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:22:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's

David La Torre (3:22:17)
I look

at it as attorney-client privilege, even though I'm not a lawyer, but I think I need to be respectful. But I think you can talk about it in general terms. I certainly think we identified who that person or people were at Penn State, but those are two things I think about right away. Who can deliver my message? And let's make sure we're very responsive to the media. And that goes a long, long way because you can't solve a crisis overnight and I can't work miracles. All I can do is help you survive until it ends.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:22:20)
Yeah.

David La Torre (3:22:46)
That's really what a crisis is all about is you can't fix it. mean, the Sandusky stuff happened. You can't change history. That's how you would solve that is by changing. Well, I can't do that. So what can I do to make Penn State come out on the other side and survive this? It's about long-term. That's how I always think about something. Lawyers, when I work with them on a crisis, and I can go on and on about this for hours, so I'll be quick. Lawyers are worried about short-term fallout.

I'm always worried about long-term reputation. So I got to get you through to the other side. And sometimes it's all about surviving and eating shit sandwiches day after day after day.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:23:26)
That's a great summary because I've seen that, which leads to my next question. ⁓ Do you get into like, ⁓ like cyber issues at all, whether a company has been hacked and they bring you in to help manage that message?

David La Torre (3:23:42)
Early

on, early on during cyber attacks, was devastating for companies, but now it's become more more commonplace as ⁓ consumers and people who might be, I don't know, an employee or have their money at a bank and a bank gets hacked or in their, people's personal information is compromised so often now that it's become, it's become

expected and almost commonplace, but early on it was a very big... Now listen, if there's a huge cyber attack and people-sensitive medical records all across the country are being exposed, that's different. But I mean, by and large, people just kind of expect it now and it's kind of sad.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:24:32)
Even that's an email saying your personal health records were part of a large breach. ⁓ Change your password. And then it's like you get 90 days or six months of free monitoring. Yeah. You know.

David La Torre (3:24:35)
All right? All right.

Which by the way I have

because I've been a victim of a couple ⁓ widespread company ⁓ attacks and you just, what am gonna do? But it is funny that you bring up the messaging because I always look at it. Like how would I have messaged this? But it's become so commonplace now that people just think it's the price of doing business.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:24:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, they do even the consumer a quick question to follow up. You said your your ⁓ firm It's interesting. You're based on you're trying to get them through and hold on to a long-term reputation Is that what PR firms do like for celebrities? Are they trying to just them through and hold on to their reputation or are they approaching it more like the lawyers do of let's just deal with this one moment right now

David La Torre (3:25:08)
Yeah. Uh huh.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

BAH

⁓ I don't work on celebrities, so I don't want to answer the question as if I'm an authority on it. But if I had to deal with a celebrity's legal issues, it would be all about ⁓ long-term viability. ⁓ Because I think it's kind of the same thing, like a short-term, long-term for a celebrity, well, it's all about their, like it's their career, they're celebrities, so they've got a career and their career is at stake.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:25:39)
Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

David La Torre (3:26:02)
And

so I would approach everything like we're going to change your image. You're going to be we're going to. But we got to work on you being credible and ⁓ and then hopefully we can save your reputation long term. But I have to be honest with you. I've turned down lots of crisis clients because I don't agree with them. I don't agree with what they've done or ⁓ who they are as a business or I've turned multiple.

multiple well-paying opportunities down because I don't want to be associated with certain things like that. Well, then people say, well, how could you be associated with Penn State, Doran Jerry Sandusky? Well, Penn State has a alumni network of 600,000 people and thousands of people who work on the campus every day, who are good people, who want to change the world or want to just want to, janitors, ⁓ restaurant workers who depend on Penn State.

people who love Penn State and it means that every day I went to work for Penn State, I would think about people like my wife who graduated from Penn State and I'd want to help those people because Penn State means so much to them. That's why I can represent Penn State. Did some people in Penn State do something wrong? You bet they did. And some people went to jail for it, but I'm not helping them. I'm helping the people who love Penn State and poured their lives into it.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:27:26)
That makes sense. That makes such sense. It does. It's so much bigger than just two people, even though Paterno, could argue, put Penn State on the map. you know, a lot more there. That really makes sense. Did you have any other questions? No, no, we were at Penn State last year and wonderful campus, great dairy. Yeah, the ice cream. Yeah, that's awesome.

David La Torre (3:27:33)
Yeah.

It's my favorite college town and

I'm a big college football fan. So every year I try and hit a different campus and I keep comparing everything to state college and state college is just a fabulous place. By the way, full disclosure, I'm not even a Penn State fan, which actually I think helped me represent them was not being a Penn Stater. Too many people get emotional when you can't be emotional in a crisis. Full disclosure.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:07)
Right.

now.

David La Torre (3:28:13)
I'm a Notre Dame football fan, I mean, so I, you know, I'm in enemy territory in a lot of ways, but we seem that we seem to have worked it out.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:22)
It's a cool place. We had a really good time. Both of our older two went to Florida State, which is also a gorgeous I'd recommend that if you're into college football. Florida State's

David La Torre (3:28:23)
⁓ it's my favorite college place.

I know

I got to get down there. That's absolutely on the list. Tallahassee going there to see a game is absolutely on the list.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:37)
Yeah, it's fun. Tallahassee

is not state college. I'm not going to sell you Tallahassee.

David La Torre (3:28:41)
And I'm and I'm and I didn't

think you were and I know that and I've heard I've got plenty of feedback. But the next time Notre Dame goes to Tallahassee, I'll probably go to the game. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:28:45)
you

Yeah. Now the

campus is insane. It's beautiful and the stadium is electric and actually like anything around FSU is like a little vibe, a little area. And there are good parts. There's great restaurants and all that. But then there's parts of Tallahassee that's like, I like Tallahassee. Yeah, there's just parts. So yeah, yes. My last my last question is always where do see yourself in five years?

David La Torre (3:28:57)
Right?

Right.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll bet. Sure.

Yeah, you know, that's a great question. What do I see myself in five years? Well, I'll be 61 at the time. if I get there and I'll be shocked that I'm in my 60s, because I feel like I'm better than I've ever been in my life. in ⁓ the best physical condition of my life. I'm in a great place mentally in my life now. I couldn't feel any better.

If I had any thoughts about five years, they would be very simple things like, hope I continue to be healthy. I hope my family's healthy and I get to enjoy my daughter now being 19 at this point and in college and you know, maybe my son with some grandchildren. I don't know, but I don't really try and put too many X's down on a timeline in my life because I really enjoy what I do and I don't think I'll ever retire.

Does that mean I'll certainly scale back, I love what I do. Love the fact that we spend time in Cape May, New Jersey. It's just a magical place for me. And if I can continue on this line for the next five years, I think I'll be pretty happy.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:30:33)
I think that sounds wonderful. think what you described as a dream, honestly, like it sounds, it sounds great, especially coming. If you look back where you came from, you know, that's just the calmness. The fact that you can enjoy the calmness shows how much healing you've, you've gone through, you know, that you get it. Like I always say to my kids, contentment is the key. The whole meaning of life and happiness and what is happiness? It's contentment.

David La Torre (3:30:35)
Yeah.

Right.

Right?

All right.

Yes.

Sure

is.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:31:02)
That's what it's not boring. It's beautiful. Just being content. No high ups, no lows, you know, it's just nice and level. ⁓ know, it's until you've gone through some things, you understand that's really it is that contentment. But one thing I just wanted to add, I do love your approach and not just self publishing and going big. Go for it. Chase it. And because I do think you've got a hell of a story that will resonate with people and

David La Torre (3:31:07)
Yeah, well said. Well said.

All right. Sure.

Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:31:31)
and might give them a playbook of kind of maybe how to navigate things or just not to give up, right? Just keep going. It's all good. We can't thank you enough, David, for not just spending so much time with us, but being so candid and open about your life and sharing with us and with our listeners. And even before this book comes out, anyone who listens to this podcast, this is going to help some people. know it. Even if it helps families. Yeah, no, it's going to help people.

David La Torre (3:31:37)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.

I hope so. And that's why I did it. I love

your format, by the way. I love the format. mean, it was just, you know, when I wrote you guys, I just like this is a this is a great show. And and it's even better because you have guitars on the on your walls in the background. And I'm like, only Gen X ⁓ people would have guitars on walls. mean, that's just such a cool look. Such a cool look. ⁓

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:32:01)
Thank you.

That's right.

I think what really makes it Gen X is we can't play any of them.

David La Torre (3:32:27)
⁓ That's so true. It's so cool though. It's so cool. Well said. Damn good.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:32:28)
We've tried, but... He's tried. I've tried. He's tried, but they look really good and they're good. They make the studio look cool. he did try, but no, thank you again. I appreciate it. I mean, I just, your whole story and...

David La Torre (3:32:38)
I agree.

Well, thank you.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:32:46)
I know that I'm sure you have people in your life telling you how amazing it is where you are now compared to where you came from and everything in between, but from outsiders looking in and from someone who went through a very traumatic childhood, I just want to say you should be so, so proud of yourself. And I don't think people tell Gen Xers that enough. I don't think anyone told us that. I think we should tell each other. You really should be proud of yourself.

David La Torre (3:32:53)
Right.

Right, right. Right?

Right?

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:33:16)
⁓ And it's really as simple as that. You really should. And also, you should be proud of that young boy because he did it. He got out and he did it. And if you could go back and tell him, don't worry, it's going to be okay. I'm going to get you there. I got you. And that's what you did. You did that for him. And so I just find this an incredibly poignant moment in your life. I'm

David La Torre (3:33:19)
Thank you.

Thank you.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:33:42)
Thanks for sharing with us, man. It's I'm so excited about the book, that other people will have access to this because it's going to be a huge help for so many people. ⁓ Well, thank you. And I hope you'll come back. OK. OK.

David La Torre (3:33:46)
Thank you.

Thank you for your kind words and they do not go unappreciated. Thank you very much. Thank you. I would love to come back. This has been awesome. It's been awesome.

And we can share more details next time. So you'll have it in front of you hopefully. it's all. Yeah.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:34:04)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And also I

want to go into the pop culture references because I love talking about Gen X pop culture. I love that.

David La Torre (3:34:11)
⁓ sure.

There's so much

in that book about it. it is really, mean, just because it's everything I remember. I feel defined by being Generation X, more 1980s Generation X, even though I was born in 70, but I really identify with that whole breakfast club culture of the 80s and Miami Vice. And it's all coming around again. Like a Miami Vice movie set in the 80s is coming out next year. like we lived in that, we lived in that.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:34:41)
race.

David La Torre (3:34:43)
No matter how fucked up it was, we lived in the best time. In the best times, you went out and played and you didn't stare at a phone and you rode bikes and you learned how to solve conflicts one-on-one with people. And I wouldn't trade that for the

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:34:46)
We did.

No, and I think even fashion wise, like we took chances like we really each of us were like little fashion icons when I look back at it I compare it to now, I think kids are more scared of taking fashion risks because everyone's taking pictures and filming and you know that inhibition isn't they don't have the gift of inhibition because they're nervous they're going to get a picture taken where we could like do whatever and now they're trying to imitate a lot of it. So no, I

David La Torre (3:35:07)
Ugh. Damn right.

Really great point. Really great. Yeah.

so true.

Right. Yes, they are.

GenX Adulting Podcast (3:35:34)
I definitely want to get, when we're going over your book, dive in a little bit more into the pop culture reference. So we're looking forward to that. And listeners, anywhere you can find David will be in the show notes. So please leave any comments or questions, and he will see them on the social media. And of course, we always love to hear from you. Please leave us any comments or questions. And thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye.

David La Torre (3:35:38)
Are you sure? Looking forward to it.