“…Turning back the pages to the times I love best…”
It didn’t hurt as much as Wieder’s pulling me off third base. Being relegated to catcher bruised my ego–but at least I stayed in the game. Regardless, I winced Sunday, even sensing my son was as right now as Alan was then. (Their bedside manners were different, to be sure. Wido glared, waving his glove with “Just get behind the plate”. Michael was marginally calmer). Only marginally.
“Don’t be an idiot Dad! You’re 65 years old.” (sic)
We’d been emailing back and forth that morning. Me? I was trying to coordinate travel to both Westchester County and Edison, New Jersey. Ah but as George told Jerry when pondering “The Switch”, it just couldn’t be done.
Finally picked up the phone. “Maybe I’ll drive,” was my thought. “I can leave Saturday morning, go right to Jersey, and come up on Sunday.”
— And that’s when he said it; that’s when, in (pardon the expression) a New York minute, I had to get real.
“DON’T BE AN IDIOT DAD! YOU’RE 65 YEARS OLD!”
(Quibble, I didn’t. Gross exaggeration of my age aside, it was game, set, match to the kid. The bat was out of my hand. Curtains for cross-country travel.
— Not that I ever did much. Hal and Howard Ross once drove west. Oh, and Bobby and the boys trekked to the Rose Bowl. (Wasn’t that the year the car broke down in Albuquerque, and they left God Damn Will in New Mexico?).
No, I stayed local. By design. But for the jaunts to the coast in the days that I had in-laws, my travel was limited. (To Columbus).
….And so it was that on this past Sunday, when my son (for the lack of a better analogy) urged me to come to New York, but to bring my play book)…that I thought back on the Top Ten Road Trips of my life:
10. Cleveland to Baltimore. 2011ish Jackie weds Alan. Driving through Breezewood…anticipating the honor of standing under Jackie and Alan’s chupah. Does she know that her sister divorced me?
9. Cleveland to Indianapolis. A decade ago, and another marriage. Alan Galan and Holly. Midst my low-fat diet someone had told me there was no fat in McDonald’s ice cream. Stopping and stopping, downing cone after cone, I hit Indy by midnight. Just in time. Nature wasn’t calling; it was screaming.
8. Columbus to Atlanta. 1971. Caravan/style we drove, Harriet’s father and me. Ricky Fenton and my Dad were in Greensboro and the game plan was for Murray and me to share a room in Jonesboro, Georgia, knock down those leads, and then meet the others in High Point (N.C.). Murray B. Galan, affectionately called “Galanpa”, was a wonderful man (Picture a Jewish Ted Baxter), but a stubborn roommate who insisted we sleep with the TV off. The memory that lingers however is the visage of this gent changing MY TIRE on 85North one sweltering Sunday. “What do you mean you don’t know how?” he asked twice.
7. Indianapolis to Passaic, N.J. (1970). I was an idiot even then; I was run by fear, even then. Lonely week in the Hoosier state ending, I called The Jersey Girl, but no one answered. To me, there was but one plausible explanation: she was cheating on me. (She wasn’t). Or even worse (in my mind), getting high. Jumping in my car I proceeded to drive across I-70, through Columbus, to New Stanton and across the state, pausing only for gas. No warning calls for her from the road—nothing. Driving with a focus as strong as a Bruce Mandel handshake, I never stopped. No, I wanted to catch her red-handed –wanted to end it dramatically! ‘Can’t imagine what I figured to do when I got there really, but I arrived after 10. Her Dad, puzzled to see me, came to the door. “I just wanted to surprise her,” I said in my best Opie Taylor. “She’s at Roberta’s house,” I was told. Back in the car I went, and right to her friend’s……where I found them sitting calmly on a couch. Just the two of them. Doing nothing. (Picture Grace Slick and Janis Joplin). It was a wasted trip, I well knew; I was a schmuck, I well knew. Still, when your girl friend’s a lot cooler than you, you run on anxiety.
6 & 5. Passaic, N.J. to Cooperstown, N.Y. (1981); Cleveland to Cooperstown (1982). The first jaunt, with Michael in tow, came weeks after Barker’s perfect game. We’d watched it on a Wrenford bed, and it only seemed right that we shoot up from a stay with his grandparents. The majesty of the place was overwhelming, and I recall too the simulated carpet field on the third floor, where kids ran the bases. Whenever someone crossed the plate canned cheers filled the room and, Lord knows how many times my boy slid into home. Or how many times he’d dust him self off, and bow to the crowd. The next year’s ride was much longer. Jamie joined too, and treasured still are my pictures of them, by a mailbox on Main Street. Those were idyllic trips, unbeknownst to me, at the beginning of less-than-idyllic times.
4. Passaic, N.J. to Nicholson, Pa. (1971). The Jersey Girl’d kicked me to the curb while I was staying with her folks. From a payphone I called information, got the number where Linda was camp counselor. (Picture Laura Nyro). It was somewhere in PA. Hurriedly, (I’m guessing quietly), plans were made. Those were days of road maps — my Dad had me keep one in the glove compartment — and to the sounds of songs like “Solitary Man”, dreidling through the hills of the Keystone state, I found her camp – and peace.
3. Queens, N.Y. to Cape May, New Jersey. (1972). Someone had to visit Fenton in the Coast Guard, so I hit the Garden State Parkway. (Until that trip I was certain the entire state was Jewish). How skinny he looked up in the second floor mess area! How proud I was of him, the first of us to serve.
2. Cleveland to East Lansing, Michigan. (1994). Primetime with The Little One. There and back we sang in the car and rehearsed for a show, all as I regaled her with stories of my days at MSU…tales that were, even then, a quarter century old. Quality time with my baby for the first time post-separation. Cherished!
1. Rye Brook, NY to Cleveland. (2012). How was I to know that Sunday that this would be my final solo? Really—whodda thunk it? Soothed by the week’s sojourn of two weddings and All Max All The Time, cruising home to have dinner with Carrie, daydreaming to the repeating “Catch The Wind” on my ipod…. How do I not give this finale the gold? I wasn’t just driving to Cleveland, I was driving home.
Anyway, that’s my list—for what it’s worth. Nothing exciting, except the memories they stir. Each, I might add, came in the summer time. Each, I must note, came in good weather:
— Sunny and warm…like the day Wieder moved me to third…and like just last Sunday, when a loving Michael took the bat from my hand.
“…Carefree highway, let me slip away on you….”
G. Lightfoot
You can detail your travels much better than I can. I come home from a trip and I can’t remember where I had dinner, or even who I was with. But, you always have a flair for remembering all the details. You still owe me a trip to Columbus.
Best trip for me was 1964 to Crown Motel with Snyder, Davis and Nehamkin .
Scene of “Mock fight”. The funniest night period.
I guess our trip to see Steve Fromin was number 11.
http://upfromdysfunction.com/rumors-of-his-death-had-been-greatly-exaggerated/
My best road trip ever was when you and your brother went on your madcap journey “Finding Steve Fromin” and leaving me at home with the three girls. Thank you.
Aside to m:
Mr. Fromin’s reemergence was the result of Brother Bob’s sustained networking (over many decades) with people I wasn’t cool enough to speak with in high school. It was Bobby that found him. That duly noted, if you want to enjoy another trip of Hal’s, please notify my brother that the only other MUTUAL friend we have from our halcyon days is Mr. Gelfand. Unfortunately, Mark resides in Massachusetts, well outside the geographical limits of my travel. The Editor