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This is later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday

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Afternoon's on the Drive. Tom Garmy
grew up in Ridley Park. He served

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as the US Army Special Forces in
the Vietnam War, and during his service

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he became a Green Beret, ended
up coming back home and becoming very close

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with his home team. He's written
all about it in a new book called

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The Secret Apartment and Tom, this
isn't about a group of children finding a

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secret apartment and secretly restoring it for
their wanton and lonely uncle. All that

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would be the Secret Gardens. What
I'm referring to this is not the Secret

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Yeah, yeah, yeah it was. It was an old concession stand that

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I used for storage because I was
running all the parking lot and once a

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year I would get as much as
a tractor trailer full of parking tickets to

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you during the year because we had
so many events, and I had an

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event almost every day of the year, because I worked not only at bet

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Stadium, but I ran the parking
lots, which the adjoining parking lots for

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the Spectrum where the Philadelphia Flyers and
Sixers and Rock concerts and all kinds of

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events took place there also, so
I had a reason to be in the

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stadium almost every day of the year. And I just sort of hid in

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plain sight. I was ubiquitous.
All people got used to seeing me.

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They never thought twice about it.
And I hid in plain sight and I

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got away with it for two years
and four months without ever getting caught.

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So were you using your skills as
a green Beret to blend in with the

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local camouflage. The government spent a
lot of money training me an unconventional warfare

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and unconventional things. So I knew
I could hide. I could hide in

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plain sight and get away with it. And did you have anything to lose?

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I mean, I know, I
work so much, I may as

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well set up a cot here at
the studio. There was something to lose.

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I mean, my uncles ran the
concessions there. They had a fifteen

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year contract for all food, drink, and novelties. And that's how I

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had gotten the job. And they
had picked up the parking concession because something

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happened in Something happened to the parking
concessionaire in the late right around nineteen seventy

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six or seventy seven and they were
summarily fired and my uncle had to take

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over for the remainder of the contract, which was until nineteen eighty one eighty

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one. It came up for a
competitive bid then and we were outbid by

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another firm that wanted to They wanted
so badly. They really gave a very

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very reasonable bid, but they weren't
making as much money and I was.

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If I had gotten caught, it
would have reflected on my uncles rather badly

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and they would have been in trouble. So there was a lot There was

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a lot of risk there. The
Secret Apartment vet Stadium a surreal memoir Tom

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Garvey talks about from nineteen seventy nine
to nineteen eighty one, he basically lived

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at work an empty concession stand inside
Vett Stadium, and it was some are

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calling it kind of a kind of
a foot a sporting event version of the

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Phantom of the Opera, except you
weren't trying to kill people. No.

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I didn't ever hear part any hurt
or anybody now, so that was my

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motive. I was just there for
a good time and had bring sneak friends

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into games, and you know,
watch I watched a lot of games.

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I loved to roller skate around the
stadium at night when it was empty.

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That was beautiful to be in the
stadium on a Sunday with sixty some thousand

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rabid fans in bad weather, and
then to be there a couple of nights

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later was just it was It was
like being a cloister. It was.

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It was schizophrenic, but it was
really good for me. And it was

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good for a writer to have all
that time by himself, and he wrote

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all about it. In the secret
apartment. Tom Garby is with us,

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so you had access to concessions.
You had access I gathered to climate control,

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heating and cooling inside that stand.
It was very comfortable in there,

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and the summer it was just cool
because it was cavernous. Yeah, in

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the winter it was warm because because
it had to be heated because the pipes

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were freeze so there were a lot
of hot pipes running through there with hot

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water in them, so they kept
the room very warm. It it was

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really cozy in the winter. Did
you sneak into the locker room to take

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your showers? I didn't have to
go into the Phillies or the Eagles locker

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rooms because There was another locker room
down under the stadium for the city workers,

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and I was welcome to have a
locker there. And I had showers,

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and I had a couple of lockers
there with all my clothes in it,

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clean clothes, shower things, my
jogging things, you know, toilet

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trees, shaving whatever. I had
everything I needed. Laundromat down down the

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road, maybe not down the road. There was a commissary because they had

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a restaurant. They also ran a
rest throughout the stadium. I had a

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key to that to the commissary.
I could go in there and use that

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washers and dryers to clean my clothes. Yeah. I had a little golf

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cart I could ride around. I
had my roller skates for roller skating all

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around the stadium and or riding my
ten speed bike. I had a pickup

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truck. I had everything a guy
would want. It was a man cave,

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but it was you wouldn't raise a
family there, But it was really,

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really very comfortable. I had everything
you could possibly want along those lines.

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Tom Garvey, author of the Secret
Apartment. Did it interfere with your

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shall we say social life? No? No, it augmented it. Actually,

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I was very popular in the city
during those those years. I could

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smuggle anybody I want it into any
game at any time, and I did.

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Tom Garvey it's an amusing memoir called
The Secret Apartment, how he lived

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in Vet Stadium. And then I
got to ask, how did it all

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come tumbling down? Or did it
It didn't tumble down. At the end

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of nineteen eighty one, on the
last of the year, we were done

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with our contract. So I had
moved all my stuff out weeks before and

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prepared the place. It was stir
all again and another concessionaire came in there

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and then moved their equipment in and
they used that storage Well, they probably

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didn't have access to that storage area, now that I think about it,

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they wouldn't have had the same access
I did because they weren't tied into the

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concession in the inside. They just
stayed in the outside office. They didn't

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come into the inner area where I
was. Tom Garvey The Secret Apartment in

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ve Stadium, where he lived from
nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one.

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He writes all about it in this
remarkable book. It'll give you a chuckle,

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and if you are a sports fan, maybe even give you some things

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to Hey, that might not be
a bad life, and I don't.

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It doesn't sound like it was.
No, it wasn't. It was a

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good life. It was a good
life. And I was single at the

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time. I didn't get married,
so I was fifty years old. That's

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the first time and only time I've
ever been married. I'm still married to

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this girl, my dreams and so
a year after that, everything turned out

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very well for me and I've been
very happy ever since. Also, but

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you had to go get a pesky
apartment, didn't you. Yeah, I

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had to go get a pesty apartment
with all you know, melling grass and

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all that stuff, Tom Garvey.
The name of the book is The Secret

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Apartment. It's available everywhere. Thank
you for the story and for joining us

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today. Thank you very much,
Thank you, thank you very much.

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I appreciate it. Thanks for listening
to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee

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Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen
to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five

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to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation