All we can do Dec. 23, 2023
Because Christmas falls on a Monday this year, we had to choose
which day we would actually make our holiday trip to Asbury Park.
Most years we go on Christmas Day.
But since there is no day off from work on Tuesday, traveling
on that day will be horrendous as people flock to get home along the Garden State
Parkway.
We thought maybe we might go down and back on Sunday (not
bothering to stay over at the Crystal Inn as we sometimes do), but that really
didn’t work for me either – maybe because it is Hank’s birthday and a day when
I used to travel far and wide to meet with family in Toms River and then with
the Garley Gang at various locations in Northern New Jersey.
We decided to go there today, get our coffee, walk around –
up the boardwalk, then into Ocean Grove, then back along Cookman (looking over
the places where Bruce Springsteen played) before making our way back home –
doing our usual Saturday food shopping on our way back (we need to remember to
pick up the ingredients for our Christmas dinner, which we will likely have on
Christmas Eve.)
For some reason, I’m in a sadder mood this year, feeling the
absence of those who in the past made Christmas special.
I don’t even have an office or a work place or fellow workmates
to share the holiday with.
One year, I bought Smurf figures for everybody associated with
the band I worked for at the time, trying to match the Smurf figure to the
personality of the person I was giving it to, sound man, singer, guitarists roadies
and even the groupies.
Most years, at the newspaper, I made a point of giving the owner
and editor gifts, even after management ceased to give us bonuses for Christmas,
just in an effort to keep up the holiday spirit that had faded with the passing
of my family.
I tried to find out where Pauly is buried, or his ashes scattered
but have yet to get news. I also contacted John Ritchie’s brother to find out
about his burial place only to find that his wife kept his ashes near to her,
never scattered or buried.
Sharon has a fantasy of having her ashes baked into the wood
of a bench along the Asbury Park boardwalk, and to have that bench located near
Madam Marie’s and the bench dedicated to Clarence, the sax player from the
E-Street band, which we visit with each trip and will do so today again.
Fortunately, I was able to get the car repaired earlier this
week, after last weekend when the car kept stalling out at inconvenient places,
sometimes forcing me to pull over until I regained control. I also got the troublesome
slow-leaking front tire fixed, a condition that prevented me from making the trip
to see my daughter, which I will likely do just ahead of New Years.
Most likely, we will take a second trip on Christmas Day out
to Western New Jersey where Pauly had died, and where he had lived in his
trailer (we lacking any other physical place to go to celebrate what would have
been his 75th Birthday – Hank’s birthday is on Christmas Eve. Fortunately, I
know where he is buried and I will likely visit his grave on Sunday, if the
waters of the Passaic River have subsided. He is buried in a grave yard along
the banks of the river, and oddly within spitting distance of the house Pauly’s
family lived in when Pauly was born.)
I most likely will need to visit Peggy’s grave, where I
usually leave a rose, and the graves of my great great grandfather, his son,
and his wife, who are buried in another graveyard in Lodi.
Peggy’s death still saddens me. She committed suicide on the
eve of St. Valentine’s Day, and the 25th anniversary of her passing is coming
up early in the year, all of this making me feel my own morality more than
usual.
Fortunately, Asbury Park tends to conjure up pleasant and
more recent memories, even though I sometimes went to the Stone Pony with Hank back
during our club-hopping days. Even as the old sea side city fades and is taken
over by a whole generation that sees itself as too dignified to like the kinds
of entertainments traditionally provided, I still see the place as magical.
Unfortunately, the old great sea side attraction, Cony Island, has announced it
will close forever, shutting the book on our generation for whom these places
are holy.
None the less, we cling to what we still have and keep the
memories alive for as long as we are alive, and sometimes that’s all we can do.
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