Sunday, November 24, 2013

When most people talk online...



…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!

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