KENO'S HOME PAGE

ME

Okay, in some ways I will tell you a lot about myself here, yet in other ways I will not tell you too much at all, either.

The name "Keno":
My real name is Lew Menechino. Keno has been my nickname since I was seven years old. It comes from my last name, pronounced: "men-er-key-no". No, my last name doesn't sound like it looks. Most of my friends called me "Keno" when I was a kid. Years later when I got into radio as a deejay I continued to used Keno, as just a single radio name or as a last name (i.e. "Lew Keno"). I also owned a marketing firm called "Keno Marketing Services" which I sold back in 1996. I use the name "Keno Internet Services" for most of  my internet work, and as a writer I'm known as just 'Keno" or "Keno Menechino".

Where I live and lived:
I was born in Brooklyn, NY. Other NY towns I've lived in: Elmont, North Babylon, and NYC. East Meadow, L.I. was where I mostly grew up. I hated that town as a kid, as it was such a "follow the leader" kind of place. The people there were not bad people, but like most places and people in Nassau County back in the late 60s and early 70s, they went through their lives with blinders on. The town sang about in the song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees, describes what it was like growing up in East Meadow: "Rows of houses that are all the same, And no one seems to care" (I did); "My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away, I need a change of scenery"....  I moved away from East Meadow as soon as I got out of high school and shortly after that left New York State for a year's journey across America to find a new home. I kinda knew where I would settle before I left NY, but I needed an excuse to be a rolling stone and bum around the country for a year. After that year on the road living in my car, plus in a couple of hippie communes and several different hostels, and staying mainly out west, I settled down in Colorado. Some thirty plus years later I'm still in Colorado. I love the state, I love living in the Rocky Mountains. I first arrived here in 1977 and lived in Manitou Springs. From 1980 till '85 I lived in Telluride Colorado and then returned to Manitou Springs where I lived up till the end of 2002. I now live in the town of Crestone. I don't think there is another small town around like this one. The folks who live here are farrr-out, to say the least. Crestonians are very liberal, and very kind too. For a small town, it is very diversified. Buddhism and Hinduism are the two main religions in Crestone and many spiritual and healing centers are located here. The populous contains many different people from all over the globe. It''s like a mini-San Francisco, or maybe a mini-NYC - people wise. But it don't look anything like either of those places (or too many other places either). There are a bunch of 14,000 foot mountain peaks here and the town itself sits on average at about 8,100 feet. Also to reside here are numerous kinds of wildlife including bears, mountain lions, fox, coyotes, elk, lots of different kinds of birds, etc., with large herds of deer throughout town.

My Family:
My Mom and Dad (my dad at one time wrote songs for a living, see the most famous song he wrote: Bungalow Song) were married for almost 55 years before Dad passed away in April of 2002 at the age of 87. Mom lives on Long Island. Two of my three sisters still live on the Island too. My oldest sister, Jeanne, lives in Pennsylvania. I'm divorced, my three kids are all grown. My youngest is in his twenties and lives in California. My two girls have kids of their own. I became a grandpa at the age of 37. I now have four grandsons and a granddaughter. I remained best friends with my ex-wife and soulmate Sue (Jackie & Debbie's mom) until the day she passed away in April of 2011. We both met back in the '70s, when the two of us were running around America trying to find ourselves. Guess we ran into each other. I've lived with two other ladies since Sue and I divorced in 1987, yet Sue and I never totally broke up, and from time to time we would again live together, long after our divorce. But as I write this bit, I'm single.

Employment history:
My first job was with the State of NY at Jones Beach. I started the job at 15, told a white lie about my age to get it. It paid great for those days and  my job was to clean trash off the beach with a stick. So you have to look down at the ground (sand) to find the trash. On that same sand lying on blankets were bikini clad females. Since I was paid to look down, what a view I had all day long! It was any male teenagers' dream come true! A couple of years later I got promoted to toll collector on the Southern State Parkway, which sucked. After that I got into sales (telemarketing, I could not get a normal sales job since I had long hair and refused to cut it) and started a career in radio where I was at first a deejay. Because I had to wear headphones all day as a DJ and also liked my music LOUD and went to lots of rock concerts, I ended up with tinnitus (a "ringing in the ears" disorder) and had to find other work in the radio field (the DJ pay sucked anyway). So my other main radio jobs were as music director, news writer, secretary, station weatherman and station promo man. After that I started my own marketing business called Keno Marketing Services, which had tie-ins to the radio business. I ran it for ten years and had 55 employees working for me when I finally burned out on it. So I sold it and retired forever from that "9 to 5" kind of work at the age of 41. Got into my computer and the web after that. I got five main sites at this time but they were meant to be mostly for fun. In a very short time they became a FT job. My Rolling Stones site's message board is the oldest and longest running Stones' board on the web.Other jobs I've done for short periods of time: clerk, commercial writer, bus driver, weather spotter and observer, sales & office manager, grocery store work, cashier, tour guide, houseman, warehouse worker and I've even been a janitor. Today I'm still a weather spotter and the official observer for Crestone, that's a volunteer job; I also design web sites for others; and I'm a writer, including being a reporter/journalist for the Crestone Eagle newspaper..... I have a new book out written about the Rolling Stones. Here is a link to it where you can order a copy if you like: Rolling Thru The Stones.

(First written in 1996, updated in July, 2011)