…They speak in short concise
sentences, not long, way too long personal commentary with memories included…
Sure thing that most people
realize that no one really cares if your mother’s father’s uncle knew so and so
or you remembered a time when… and that your reasoning for going on and on when
never really asked a question just shown something posted that they were
interested in and perhaps you might be too, ya know?
Failing these social graces
admittedly, while online is an extraordinary flaw in my personality, and it’s just as
BAD in person, if not more so…
Who knows if it could go back
to me being practically an only child, since my half brother was nineteen years
older than me and was fighting in Korea when I was born and from
there he spent most of his adult life in and out of VA hospitals, because of
what happened to him over there…
I think it was PTSD, but I
don’t believe they had that name for it yet, then.
Any-who, being the fact that
my dad worked very hard with his cousins in the Eclipse on Route 17 in Hasbrouck
Heights NJ, a bowling alley and cocktail lounge with entertainment, it had a restaurant, and snack bar too that they all
owned together he was gone a whole lot. Which he owned until 1965 from 1946, prior to that he had Irving's Dairy, a small grocery store from 1927, yep the heart of the depression till 1946 when he joined his cousins in the Eclipse.
But mom when she wasn’t
feeling poorly was pretty good with me and my quirkiness, and loved music too.
She was ten to fifteen years older than most of the other moms on the block,
since I was a product of her and dad’s second marriage, he having been a
widower and her a divorcee from a philandering musician and at the time had a nine
year old son… She was a legal secretary for years and then dad and his cousins
had mom help with the business books sometimes, so I was told.
So dad apparently felt with
mom’s not feeling well, I think even at that time she was undiagnosed with
rheumatoid arthritis, which most people didn’t discuss illnesses then for some
reason, but she was in a lot of pain and had Gold Shots in those days, the
fifties and nineteen sixties… Mom sort of worked from home when needed.
Although, my mom was thirty-nine when I was born and dad was forty-three at that time, I would find my
mother dancing when I came home from school, to usually a rock and roll
station, and she was well into her forties by then, maybe even fifty something!
Dad would send us away for
the holidays to the mountains, meaning the Catskills with great hotels with all
the amenities, from delicious Kosher meals to top entertainment in their
nightclubs, swimming pools, indoors or out, same with ice skating rinks and I
would meet kids from the city, that is New York, who were older than me and
very smart, since they had what is called a two in one year program, and so
most graduated around sixteen or younger, not eighteen or even seventeen like I
did…
And so being from Brooklyn,
Long Island, or even Manhattan they sure were a bit more worldlier than me… and
so I was apt to become more sophisticated just by association, or not!
And so after the summer or
fall or winter or spring that I had been there for a vacation I always felt
that my at home friends were, well different than me… and most didn’t want to
hear a thing about my time away from them…
That I so totally enjoyed,
but I suppose sounded as if I was bragging a bit?
So I stopped trying to talk
to people, since no one was interested I suspect…
And for a few years people
liked me for that and told me everything, in fact more than I wanted to hear
from them!
And I complained to someone,
a close friend or my mom or somebody, but no one knew what to do, until… I
thought long and hard…to reverse the talking to boring them and oddly enough,
you know something, sadly, it has never ever stopped since then!
It got worse when I was
fifteen and had the privilege of going with my parents cross country that
summer of 1965 and we visited forty states and many of the major points of
interest from you name it, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Squaw Valley and Sun
Valley which I so enjoyed ice skating in the summer, LA and San Fran and as we
crossed the country that incredible summer each major city we left had a race
riot right behind us… what a harsh and horrid time for many and an education
for me nightly on those hotels TV sets…
You see my dad had retired by
selling the Eclipse that April 1, 1965, since he and only his one cousin Ike
were alive their two other partners had passed away and they were killing
themselves never taking days off.. Due to a few robberies, and oddly enough it
turned out to be their own night watchman, just horrid! I can still hear dad on
the phone with the police with them telling him, just after he had just gotten
home that there had been another break in!
It was good idea to sell the
place and so he and his cousin made that decision, since Ike was also a lawyer
by profession, like his brother that he put through law school, it was all done very nicely and sold to someone who was able to
pay them what they asked for it, so I was told many years later, and that is why my
father who had worked from a small child and owned his own businesses from the
age of nineteen, finally retired at the age of fifty-eight!
Dad did get a bit bored after
about six months of trying hard to do hobbies, but he loved people more…and so after
awhile dad went to that job service Snelling and Snelling and he started
working part time at different jobs like when he was nine to find what he liked,
but it would be years later that he would find it, after I was married woman and
when we all had moved to Lakewood NJ, us first then Mom and Dad, six months
later and only a mile away from us… and Dad continued doing odd jobs when not
driving his neighbors hither and yon or mom too, he delivered false teeth and other
things as his assignments…until he became a part-time toll taker on the Parkway right by his exit,
he worked about twenty hours a week until a year and half before he died at the
age of seventy-nine on Mother’s Day May 11, 1986! Four and half years after
mom…
You see, this is what gets me
on the “don’t engage or talk to list!”
So many things in life create our minds to
remember and so before it is all forgotten I write it down…that’s all.
I highly recommend to all of
you, for when mom died it was instantaneously practically, only in eleven and half hours,
from a major stroke that she never awoke from on February 15, 1982. And I never
was able to ask her so many things, things that today I still want to know…film
your loved ones or tape their voices, whatever you can do and get your family
histories or questions or secrets answered when they are still alive and well
or have time from their deaths' call and it will be something to cherish long
after they are gone…Dad had five and half weeks while hospitalized from his
brain stem thrombosis, highly unusual to have that long…and we talked and talked...
It is very nice to remember
nice times from long ago, so write it down to share with whomever you care to…
On that note of too much
notes, allow me to be the very first to wish all you a very happy good night
and ask you all to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages
with you know who and I will too!
And next time please be here
or be square, ya hear!
PS There is so many more
things to tell…Ahhh memories!