The disasters of 1975 Jan. 21, 1986
What an idiot I was, forgetting the year in which my Aunt
Alice died.
Several times in these pages, I claimed her death as being
in 1974. But yesterday, I saw her grave stone and it said 1975.
Her death should have been branded in my brain, since it was
clearly one of the most emotional moments of my life.
Even though the event occurred more than a decade ago, I
should not have forgotten – especially because her death was significant in a
number of other events that followed, a shattering of our family in a way that
had not happened before. Not even my grandfather’s death a decade before that
had such an impact on the family.
Harold hid himself in a hill top house overlooking Greenwood
Lake. Teddy fled to the Jersey Shore.
Albie moved his family to South Carolina. Ritchie with no one to check on him lost
himself deep into a bottle and eventually to the edge of suicide. While Alice was
a significant figure in all our lives, she was closest to Ritchie.
Alice’s death came
after several significant changes, such as my attempt to move in with Pauly and
Garrick into the apartment where I currently live, an arrangement destined for
disaster since our three personalities would not mesh in such close proximity, turning
each of us against each other, me and Garrick against Pauly, Pauly and me
against Garrick, and ultimately, Garrick and Pauly against me, driving me to
see other arrangements in what Garrick would call the “fancy apartment” in a wealthier
part of town.
Perhaps the intense heat that summer added to this conflict.
Pauly, who had quit the band again, sold his guitar and bought an air
conditioner, which he installed in his room and closed the door against us,
even though we begged him for just a little of his cool air. Garrick got so
angry he shoved a pack of firecrackers under the door, grinning at me as Pauly’s
curses exploded with each bang.
Just after moving out, Hank won his lawsuit over the 1972
car accident, and I – because I was also injured – won a piece of the
settlement with which I bought a four track reel to reel tape recorder, and
purchased a used 1960 beige Chevy Impala – after I had previously bought a
wreck from a Jewish boy in Montclair that lasted two days before dying on the side
of the road.
Once I had a workable car, Pauly talked me into driving down
the shore to Pt. Pleasant where our friend Alf was managing some ocean side bungalows,
meeting Pauly’s old fling from high school, Carol Gaskin, setting the stage for
one of the stranger conflicts as Pauly took over Alf’s bedroom – leaving me,
Garrick, Rob and Alf like frustrated wolves howling outside.
Early in the year, Hank and Garrick drove me Pennsylvania to
visit my ex-wife and see my kid for the first time in nearly three years,
another event destined for disaster, when my kid started screaming after me as
I left, “Daddy Don’t go,” causing my ex-wife to refuse any more visits.
Although I eventually took her to court, she later fled for
the west coast, and it wasn’t until mid--1982 that I saw either of them again.
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