Damian Renzello is the owner and inventor of Porta-Rinx, a portable ice rink kit, and he’s the inventor of the Bambini, a mini ice resurfacing machine. Bottom line, Damian is who you call if you want your own personal hockey rink and everything that goes with it. He’s a one-man shop.
In this latest episode of "What class are you?" reporter Erica Heilman sat down with him at the Bambini headquarters behind his house, and they talked about class.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Damian Renzello: My mom came up with an idea about a portable kit for a skating rink. I thought it was a great idea, so I immediately went to work on it, and I immediately designed and created Porta-Rinx.
Erica Heilman: Just for people to understand — we're sitting in the back of the Bambini shop, and there's every single inch of the walls is covered in posters and pictures and — what the hell is that red thing up there?
Damian Renzello: These are all my inventions. These are all my products. This is my whole Boston Bruins area, my American flag stuff.
Erica Heilman: Jesus.
Damian Renzello: I love Jesus. Yeah.
Erica Heilman: And then next door to Jesus is a very fancy looking bottle of scotch.
Damian Renzello: Yeah, but it's not. I had a toothache and I heard somebody said that if you rinse it with whiskey.
Erica Heilman: All right, so who's making your equipment? Who's making your—
Damian Renzello: I do. I manufacture everything here.

Erica Heilman: But, you would rather be employing people.
Damian Renzello: I would much rather employ 200 people and pay them solid money and have a warehouse manufacturing products. But I don't know how to borrow money. I don't know how to raise money. I'm not a grant writer. I'm not very good with my grammar and all that different stuff. I'm not college educated. I'm not educated, period. So to fill out a loan application, that's not my school. It's just, it's not my school.
Erica Heilman: So it takes money to make money.
Damian Renzello: Takes money to make money, that's right. And if you got no money, then you just got to keep climbing.
Erica Heilman: But you have an incredibly successful business.
Damian Renzello: Amazing. What I have here is what I've built over the past 27 years, but it's not much. I mean, it's a lot compared to a little. But for many years, after my skating season, all summer long, I do roofing, carpentry, electrical, cement work, concrete work, you name it. Construction wise, blue collar wise, and that's what I would do.
Erica Heilman: You just say blue collar. What is blue collar? What is not blue collar?
Damian Renzello: White collar.
Erica Heilman: What's the difference?

Damian Renzello: Working at an insurance company or working at a construction site. White collar is clean. A blue collar is dirty. If I had a white hoodie, this hoodie would be black. I think white collar makes more money. They work in indoor environments, office scenario, insurance companies, office building.
Erica Heilman: Do they know more than people who are blue collar?
Damian Renzello: When it comes to insurance issues, yeah. When it comes to fixing a house, no. When it comes to changing a flat tire, no. You know, a white collar, they're gonna call AAA.
Erica Heilman: You don't think you’d want to fix your tire anymore if you're white collar.
Damian Renzello: If I didn't have to pull the engine out of my Suburban and rebuild it and learn how to rebuild at YouTube University? If I didn't have to, I would have paid somebody to do it. But if you talk to some insurance guy and ask him to come help wire your house, he would be clueless. And that person being clueless is the way I feel on the other side of the spectrum of people that come from an education. When they ask me something about what's general, I don't get it. I'm not from that school.
Erica Heilman: Right.
Damian Renzello: But the American dream is not to be low class, it's to have money. So a lot of kids grow up with a mom and dad. They go through high school, they graduate, then they pick up what college they're going to go to. When they're in that process, they're in a white collar process. They want to be lawyers, they want to be doctors, they want to be insurance people. They want to be white collar people.
If you talk to some insurance guy and ask him to come help wire your house, he would be clueless. And that person being clueless is the way I feel on the other side of the spectrum of people that come from an education.Damian Renzello
Erica Heilman: OK, so let's compare. We're both 54. We're exactly the same age. You were in Vermont. I was in Vermont. So what were you thinking about when you were 17?
Damian Renzello: I was thinking about Sheila, Susie, Julie (laughter).
Erica Heilman: So my dad was a doctor.
Damian Renzello: Ohhhhh. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that funny? (Laughter).
Erica Heilman: And I did not imagine that I could be a doctor. That was not something I thought would be possible for me. But I did think I was going to go to college. I felt pretty safe.
Damian Renzello: Comfortable.
Erica Heilman: I felt comfortable. So tell me about, you know, you.
Damian Renzello: My dad left before I was born. My dad was not a part of my life at all. I grew up in a poor family. I think I was brought up to survive. I went to Barre Spaulding for a day. For one day, just to try it out, and I decided that it's not for me. So then my next step was, I figured, the military. So I went into the military. You know, my set plans were no set plans.
Erica Heilman: So I'm off at college, and I'm taking tap dancing. I'm in tap dancing class, and you're in the military. So where do we go from here, comparing our experiences?
Damian Renzello: Well, it's very hard to compare apples and bananas. There's just no comparison, right? An apple’s an apple, a banana’s a banana, right? They’re both fruits, we’re both people. But they're totally different points.
Erica Heilman: You know, maybe we've been different fruits from the very beginning, given our different circumstance. I mean, so even before you're in the military and I'm in tap dancing class. So when did we part ways? Where were we when we became different fruits. How old were we?
Damian Renzello: I think it was when we were born, where we were born from, where we came from. You know, I was born in, you know, 1969, as you were. I was born with no father. You were born with a father.
Erica Heilman: OK, but we're still—
Damian Renzello: You were born an apple and I was born a banana. We’ll never be the same. We’ll never be apples and apples, you know what I mean?
We can socialize and hang out and be on friendly terms, but as far as you being on my page and me being on your page, that's an impossibility. That can't happen. That just can't happen.
This audio story was produced by Peter Engisch.
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