Joey Ramone’s brother, Mickey Leigh is writing a memoir entitled, "Surviving Joey Ramone" to be published by Simon and Schuster. He is working with legendary "Punk" journalist, Legs McNeil. "It’s weird thinking about all this stuff it kind gets you, you know?" Mickey bemusedly stated one day, "I remember stories like when we were kids." Mickey’s crooked smile warms at the memory. "Joey was eight and I was like, five and we were playing on the bridge that is over the highway, near our apartment in Forest Hills, Queens. All of a sudden the cars stop driving and we see this motorcade drive up with the motorcycles and police cars, lights flashing, you know...It’s President Eisenhower. We’re watching this when Jeff (Joey’s real name) picks up a little rock and drops it off the bridge and it hits the limo with the President’s seal on it. Joey actually dropped a rock on the President’s car! Well, we get all scared and run back home as fast as we could. We’re like hiding." Mickey laughs. Even now the look of fear glimmers in his eyes.
   "A couple of days later our Uncle takes us to Bear Mountain State Park for a day of nature. As we come into the park, there’s like a crowd with barricades and a helicopter and who is standing there but President Eisenhower. And he points at me and Joey and gestures for us to come to him. Well we shit. Now we’re in trouble. So Jeff freezes and so do I but our Uncle he starts pushing us through the barricades and we are taken to the President. I was afraid he was going to have us arrested." Mickey leans back in his chair shaking his mop of unruly hair. "Man, I thought for sure it was over for us. President Eisenhower bends down and tells us to be good boys and listen to our parents and then he sends us back to our uncle. We were free! We weren’t on our way to Sing Sing." — George Seminara Q