Memories Light the Corners of My Mind

The mind is a strange place, at least mine is. When things happen that force me to remember, it is truly amazing the recall I possess for events from 50 years ago.

I am sure it’s relatable. How many among us of a certain age can name any 80s song in five notes but can’t remember what we had for dinner without a lot of searching?

I was eight when I first moved to Oceanside, on the South Shore of Long Island. The kid from Brooklyn who was sent to Yeshiva was now being shipped to the suburbs and public school.

Those details are less important here than the memory of my first Hebrew School carpool. This would be unremarkable except that there were six of us, 8 or 9 years old, being transported across town to the Temple three times per week by willing parents.

As an aside, nobody I know liked going to Hebrew School. Especially not me, coming off four years of Yeshiva, so Hebrew School to me was like leaving the major leagues to go play high school baseball. It was something we did because our parents sent us in that direction. When we hit 13, there was a big party, and then we moved on with our lives.

There were three of us on the same block, East Lexington. Phil lived across from me and Jack down the street. Two blocks over on Thompson were Jared and Marc, and a few blocks the other way on Elaine was Howie.

For any younger readers who stumble upon this, understand that there were no seven-passenger SUVs with bucket seats for all. And no seat belts. Well they may have existed, but not for us. Nor were there restrictions on where children could sit, or lie, or kneel.

There were station wagons though, with names like Country Squire and Kingswood Estate. These babies had enormous back seats, front seats that spanned the entire width of the vehicle, and something we called a back-back. Six kids in all sorts of configurations. My favorite as we got older was the one where one of us kneeled in the back-back.

1975 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon, described on Hemmings.com as: “The undisputed king of ‘70s family haulers, perfectly embodying the era’s peak ’land yacht’ style and suburban nostalgia.” Photo: Hemmings.com

For families without a station wagon, maybe it was the driver and two kids across the front. That middle kid in the front often bumped his knee on the ashtray, because the smoking parent needed a place for their ashes. Sometimes it was four across in the back seat, and as we got older and bigger, the space grew smaller, but no one ever minded.

There were variations of this carpool as we headed in different directions. Basketball, soccer, Little League. Football for Jack, he was bigger than all of us. The six-boy carpool lasted longer than college. Almost five years, until each of us turned 13 and one by one disappeared after the Bar Mitzvah.

Jared, Marc, Howie, Phil, Jack, and I all attended the same elementary school, middle school, and graduated from Oceanside High School 40 years ago this past June.

Barely a year after college I moved away, first to Delaware and then to Florida. Most of those childhood connections faded for me. Years later, as social media grew, I reconnected, sort of. Social media gives you the illusion of being in each other’s lives without the effort or the commitment.

I’ve been in touch with Phil lately more than normal, as he’s going through some stuff, but even that has been exclusively text.

A late text from Phil last night stunned me. News in a screenshot from another text that Jack had passed away only hours before.

I was hit by sadness for his own family, including his mom, brother, and sister we grew up around. Also the strange, awful realization that the first of us from that carpool group was gone.

This is not an attempt at a eulogy. Jack and I shared baseball cards as kids and exchanged the occasional Facebook message as adults, but we weren’t in each other’s lives.

To my knowledge, Jack stayed close to Oceanside, and I think his kids were raised in the house he grew up in, down the block from Phil and me. Phil texted me photos recently from a drive by East Lexington of a sculpted pair of lions guarding his house, and my house, which is unrecognizable from when I lived there.

Everything changes, but memories stay frozen in place, popping up when you least expect them. Or maybe they return just when you need them.