Some times good things come from misery and heartbreak. When my parents divorced in the late '50s, my brother and Iwere told we'd spend the weekdays with my fatherinour original home, and the weekends at my mother's recently purchased row home five blocks away.
At the time, my brother and I were more upset about leaving our friends on the weekends than my parents divorcing. That didn't particularly bother us. They'd been fighting for as long as we could remember. The divorce was undoubtedly their best hope of not sustaining a major injury, and my brother and I seriously needed some peace and quiet.
Under normal circumstances, five blocks wouldn't have been that much of a barrier between friends, but close to my mother's home, and separating the communities, was a woods. It could be negotiated but it was a pain to do so, and we lacked the ambition for the trek.
So Jimmy, Ben, Jon, Denny, Bob, Charlie, Junior, V.J., and the rest of our neighborhood gang were sadly left behind.
It took us about five minutes to make new friends on that side of the woods. It didn't take long because, for some odd reason, there weren't as many kids over there. Maybe it was because it was a more established neighborhood and the kids were older than us. Our new found friends couldn't explain it either, they were just grateful for new playmates.
Because it was an older neighborhood, there were plenty of trees and bushes to provide hiding places for games and mischief. The nearby woods also provided some nice sledding trails in the winter and a place to get lost in during the warmer months.
Eventually, as we got older, the guys from both communities got together and formed one big, constantly revolving, gang.
For the most part, everybody got along fine. My brother Steve and I felt good that we were the catalyst that brought all of us together.
We were now able to play baseball with not only a catcher but a right and center fielder. As an aside, there was nothing worse moving from left to right field whenever a left hander came to the plate. Being left handed, I got my share of stares from the outfielder. Coming in a close second, was playing catcher-free and needing to retrieve the ball after each errant throw or missed swing.
Tackle football was much more enjoyable with the cushion the extra bodies provided (yes, we played tackle without pads or equipment, more on that in a later blog).
Our gang lasted in its entirety until the summer of '65, when summer jobs and girlfiends came into the picture. Not long after that, the draft reared its ugly head. Then came college, full time employment and, of course, marriage.
Most of our gang still managed to get together for parties and special occasions throughout the seventies. Some of us even stayed close in the early nineties.
Ben, one of our original friends moved to South Carolina. My wife and I visited his family in 1993. He passed away on June 23rd, 2000 of cancer. My brother and I were pall bearers at his funeral.
In the summer of 1999, we had a small reunion to celebrate my brother's 50th birthday.
From left to right: Denny, Bob, My brother Steve, Jimmy, and myself.
Denny is still around. Bob has since moved to Florida. I still see my brother on occasion, and Jimmy and I, and our wives still get together from time to time to reminisce.
I'd like to note in closing that Jimmy's mom, as of this writing, still lives in the old neighborhood. She's in the row home directly across the street from mine.