A Different Time and Place

PACSMan: I love it when my kids ask me what my computer was like growing up. I show them a pencil. They ask about my cell phone. I told them the networks back then were very, very primitive, with our “Internet” back then known as MVR- the mom voice relay. My mom would open the door and yell for me. Another mom would hear it and relay it to yet another mom, and if you were half a mile away, you would know within 20 seconds that it was time to come home. Best of all, it was free and you never dropped a call either. Of course our town had at best 8,000 people, most of whom knew each other, and was only a mile square from end to end, but still...

It was such a simpler time. When there was a home game on Saturdays around noon the band would march through the heart of town from the high school, down Maple Avenue and over to the football fields. You’d hear them and know...The civil defense siren would test itself every Saturday as well, at 11:55, and when there was a fire our volunteers knew where to go because the system they used based on siren taps told you which intersection it was at. So where am I going with this….Oh yes, the holidays…

Back then we too had Salvation Army bell ringers, but they were actual members of the Salvation Army, and did it because they believed in collecting to help the poor, not because it was a paid position like it is today. They NEVER EVER sat down and EVERYONE was there always smiling and ringing the bells in their neatly pressed Salvation Army uniforms, not just an apron over blue jeans. Often times there would be 2-3 musicians with them, playing songs or singers singing next to the kettles as well - as the snow drifted down all around us. I tell my kids this and they look at me like I am crazy or have been looking at too many Norman Rockwell paintings…but that was the way it was...a different time and a different place…

Now I’ve seen more shrinks in my life that any six people combined - mostly for my own edification in trying to be the better person that I truly need to be - yet a large part of my childhood memories have stayed locked up behind walls that as one counselor put it “made the Great Wall of China look like a picket fence.” I remembered very, very little of my life before age 12…until recently that is...when the wall suddenly developed a leak. I have no idea what has caused this sudden flood of memories to come back, but they have. At first it scared the living hell out of me, but now it’s almost calming in its own way.

The other night in one dream I was back in kindergarten, age 6, and all the kids through 5th grade and their parents were in the playground at Oakland Street School. Dee Dee, the janitor, had moved the piano outside and Miss Broadmeyer led everyone - kids and parents alike - in singing Christmas carols as a light snow fell upon us. In my dream, I could even feel the cold air, even though mom bundled me up real well (we always walked to school, even that night). I could even taste the snowflakes on my tongue… What’s funny is everyone in the dream sang together and everyone wished each other a Merry Christmas. If there was a Jewish family or Indian family there (admittedly not that many in my white bread town of Red Bank though), we wished them happy holidays and they sang along. We didn’t need the government telling us we had to desegregate because everyone of every color and every creed all sang carols together and ate homemade cookies (I don’t think the stores even offered store made ones back then), while the milkman (yes, we had one of those too) supplied all the milk for free - poured from glass bottles. Some were Christmas carols, some Jewish songs (in the dream I recall singing “I have a little dreidel” so it musta been Jewish - and this was well before I knew the Dalai too), but all the songs had all one thing in common - they were happy songs sung by happy people. No one from the ACLU was there to monitor us because….well they probably would have been kicked out if they had been.

Political correctness? What was that? We even hugged and kissed our teachers, and they hugged and kissed us back. They truly LOVED us, and we them. There was no such thing as sexual harassment back then either…

There were no in-school or out-of-school suspensions. If the teacher called your house, you were in serious deepness. Guilty until proven innocent. Unlike our Southern counterparts, our teachers weren’t allowed to hit you - spanking was outlawed in the North by then - but it probably would have been less painful if they had. One call to home and mom and dad would be all over my case and my…... If they had a DCF back then, they too would probably join the hit force as well.

The cops never arrested you when you did something stupid because they all knew your parents and knew that it would be much better if your parents addressed it at home than through the system. So in the car you went - scared um….to death what would happen as they talked in hushed tones, laughing on the inside, but so serious on the outside. Juvie was only for the really bad kids, and we were never bad kids, just stupid kids, or shall I say typical kids. Big difference. That is why it’s so hard for me to get mad at mine own kids for being stupid. I was stupid once…and many think I still am…or at least my kids feel that way. In another decade I may get smart again though…we’ll see.

Christmas Eve we always ate an Italian feast complete with pasta fritte (fried bread dough) and suppa de peche (seafood spaghetti sauce) and all sorts of goodies, including incredible pastries from Caputtos Italian Bakery in Long Branch. Any time you traveled a whopping 10 miles to get pastries you knew they had to be good. We never knew half of what we were eating at the time, but ate it anyway - and it was delicious. Whether at our house, Mr and Mrs T’s, an aunt or uncles house, friends - anywhere, everywhere - we’d eat and eat and eat and laugh until it was time to go to midnight mass - and a high mass at that. That was another night’s dream as well - Christmas Eve - complete with midnight mass, the songs in both Italian and Latin, the incense, the stations of the Cross, and me there, sometimes in the audience, sometimes serving as an altar boy, although not until much later in life, since that was reserved for the “older” kids of 12 and up. In my dream I could actually smell the incense and hear the incense burner moving back and forth as we blessed the people.

As I looked around in my dream, I saw all our friends and neighbors - everyone knew everyone - and looked up in the balcony and saw my Aunt Mary singing with the choir- “Oh bambino mio divino…” There were maybe seats for 300 if that and the church was always packed on Christmas eve.

By comparison my kids go to my ex’s church that holds about 3,000 people and cost $46M to build, almost $10M of it on audio and video equipment alone. The worship team there consists almost totally of professional musicians – St. Anthony’s had parishioners with an average age of 67. I was proud putting my $1 in the collection basket Christmas Eve; at my kid’s church you feel like tipping the usher $20 for the magnificent Vegas-style production. Monsignor knew us all by name - my ex’s church only knows the top 1% of tithers and probably doesn’t even know half the church staff. I go to a much smaller church - maybe 600 people tops - and know most of the men and can call the pastor anytime, if I need him. That said, it’s just not the same as when I was growing up though.

The last time I was in St Anthony’s was a few years ago at my Aunt Mary’s funeral where I delivered her eulogy. Before then the last time I was there was at my dad’s funeral nearly 6 years ago and before then mom’s funeral almost two decades prior to then….Yes, I am an orphan….BUT thankfully my life doesn’t read like a Dickens novel or anywhere close…although Dad did have an Ebenezer Scrooge attitude about Christmas which I never fully understood until I was in my mid 40’s.

Even though I had been in the church just a few years before it had been over 40 years since I was last on the altar there. I just sorta froze for a moment as hundreds of memories came flashing back in rapid fire sequence. The altar always looked so much …bigger...and the priest so much more…imposing. We never had altar girls back then either - blasphemy!! - and never ever were we allowed to wear sneakers either - only polished black shoes. The church had changed immensely since I was a child - it didn’t even look the same - but I closed my eyes and could hear the songs, smell the incense, see everyone I knew…and then I had to speak. But I was speechless…my heart was broken at the loss not just of my dear Aunt Mary, but of my youth well….a time and a place that was so much better than the fast paced high tech world we live in today…

Christmas day was always reserved for relatives and friends. Like the miracle of the loaves and fishes wherever we were- our house or theirs- there was always a steady stream of people in and out- some whom we never knew who they were and it didn’t really matter either- there were never any strangers in the house at Christmas and we never ran out of food or wine either. And Uncle Louie, God love him, you’d put a bottle of Sambucca in front of him and the laughs would get louder and louder as the night progressed. God how I miss that all….

So if I happen to chat with you between now and the December 25th and wish you a Merry Christmas, please bear with me for not saying Happy Holidays instead. I’m just flashing back to much a simpler time and place, where the heart always goes at the holidays…

Have a blessed holiday season and, oh yes, Merry Christmas to you and yours!!….

PACSMan