This is later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear Weekday
Afternoon's on the Drive. Tom Garmy grew up in Ridley Park. He served
as the US Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War, and during his service
he became a Green Beret, ended up coming back home and becoming very close
with his home team. He's written all about it in a new book called
The Secret Apartment and Tom, this isn't about a group of children finding a
secret apartment and secretly restoring it for their wanton and lonely uncle. All that
would be the Secret Gardens. What I'm referring to this is not the Secret
Yeah, yeah, yeah it was. It was an old concession stand that
I used for storage because I was running all the parking lot and once a
year I would get as much as a tractor trailer full of parking tickets to
you during the year because we had so many events, and I had an
event almost every day of the year, because I worked not only at bet
Stadium, but I ran the parking lots, which the adjoining parking lots for
the Spectrum where the Philadelphia Flyers and Sixers and Rock concerts and all kinds of
events took place there also, so I had a reason to be in the
stadium almost every day of the year. And I just sort of hid in
plain sight. I was ubiquitous. All people got used to seeing me.
They never thought twice about it. And I hid in plain sight and I
got away with it for two years and four months without ever getting caught.
So were you using your skills as a green Beret to blend in with the
local camouflage. The government spent a lot of money training me an unconventional warfare
and unconventional things. So I knew I could hide. I could hide in
plain sight and get away with it. And did you have anything to lose?
I mean, I know, I work so much, I may as
well set up a cot here at the studio. There was something to lose.
I mean, my uncles ran the concessions there. They had a fifteen
year contract for all food, drink, and novelties. And that's how I
had gotten the job. And they had picked up the parking concession because something
happened in Something happened to the parking concessionaire in the late right around nineteen seventy
six or seventy seven and they were summarily fired and my uncle had to take
over for the remainder of the contract, which was until nineteen eighty one eighty
one. It came up for a competitive bid then and we were outbid by
another firm that wanted to They wanted so badly. They really gave a very
very reasonable bid, but they weren't making as much money and I was.
If I had gotten caught, it would have reflected on my uncles rather badly
and they would have been in trouble. So there was a lot There was
a lot of risk there. The Secret Apartment vet Stadium a surreal memoir Tom
Garvey talks about from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one, he basically lived
at work an empty concession stand inside Vett Stadium, and it was some are
calling it kind of a kind of a foot a sporting event version of the
Phantom of the Opera, except you weren't trying to kill people. No.
I didn't ever hear part any hurt or anybody now, so that was my
motive. I was just there for a good time and had bring sneak friends
into games, and you know, watch I watched a lot of games.
I loved to roller skate around the stadium at night when it was empty.
That was beautiful to be in the stadium on a Sunday with sixty some thousand
rabid fans in bad weather, and then to be there a couple of nights
later was just it was It was like being a cloister. It was.
It was schizophrenic, but it was really good for me. And it was
good for a writer to have all that time by himself, and he wrote
all about it. In the secret apartment. Tom Garby is with us,
so you had access to concessions. You had access I gathered to climate control,
heating and cooling inside that stand. It was very comfortable in there,
and the summer it was just cool because it was cavernous. Yeah, in
the winter it was warm because because it had to be heated because the pipes
were freeze so there were a lot of hot pipes running through there with hot
water in them, so they kept the room very warm. It it was
really cozy in the winter. Did you sneak into the locker room to take
your showers? I didn't have to go into the Phillies or the Eagles locker
rooms because There was another locker room down under the stadium for the city workers,
and I was welcome to have a locker there. And I had showers,
and I had a couple of lockers there with all my clothes in it,
clean clothes, shower things, my jogging things, you know, toilet
trees, shaving whatever. I had everything I needed. Laundromat down down the
road, maybe not down the road. There was a commissary because they had
a restaurant. They also ran a rest throughout the stadium. I had a
key to that to the commissary. I could go in there and use that
washers and dryers to clean my clothes. Yeah. I had a little golf
cart I could ride around. I had my roller skates for roller skating all
around the stadium and or riding my ten speed bike. I had a pickup
truck. I had everything a guy would want. It was a man cave,
but it was you wouldn't raise a family there, But it was really,
really very comfortable. I had everything you could possibly want along those lines.
Tom Garvey, author of the Secret Apartment. Did it interfere with your
shall we say social life? No? No, it augmented it. Actually,
I was very popular in the city during those those years. I could
smuggle anybody I want it into any game at any time, and I did.
Tom Garvey it's an amusing memoir called The Secret Apartment, how he lived
in Vet Stadium. And then I got to ask, how did it all
come tumbling down? Or did it It didn't tumble down. At the end
of nineteen eighty one, on the last of the year, we were done
with our contract. So I had moved all my stuff out weeks before and
prepared the place. It was stir all again and another concessionaire came in there
and then moved their equipment in and they used that storage Well, they probably
didn't have access to that storage area, now that I think about it,
they wouldn't have had the same access I did because they weren't tied into the
concession in the inside. They just stayed in the outside office. They didn't
come into the inner area where I was. Tom Garvey The Secret Apartment in
ve Stadium, where he lived from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty one.
He writes all about it in this remarkable book. It'll give you a chuckle,
and if you are a sports fan, maybe even give you some things
to Hey, that might not be a bad life, and I don't.
It doesn't sound like it was. No, it wasn't. It was a
good life. It was a good life. And I was single at the
time. I didn't get married, so I was fifty years old. That's
the first time and only time I've ever been married. I'm still married to
this girl, my dreams and so a year after that, everything turned out
very well for me and I've been very happy ever since. Also, but
you had to go get a pesky apartment, didn't you. Yeah, I
had to go get a pesty apartment with all you know, melling grass and
all that stuff, Tom Garvey. The name of the book is The Secret
Apartment. It's available everywhere. Thank you for the story and for joining us
today. Thank you very much, Thank you, thank you very much.
I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee
Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five
to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation