Will not fade away Jan. 19, 2024
Technically, it’s been four years to the day that Paulie
passed away, even though at the time, we didn’t learn about it until a few days
later.
I suppose over that time I should have gotten over his
passing, and yet, he was such a huge part of my life, especially my youth, I can’t
quite believe he is gone.
I had hoped to find his burial site or where his ashes had
been scattered in order to visit the location in time for his anniversary, but
alas, I have received no news of it, and may have to wait for his fifth anniversary
instead.
His immorality, however, is not where he is buried, but how
we remember him.
Since he has no kids (that he was aware of), he must rely on
the memory of nephews and their descendants, although I doubt they will see him
as anything more than eccentric, rather than how he influenced many of us, who
might not have pursued arts and music had we not met him.
We went up to the old cottage on Lake Hopatcong a few weeks
ago, but it was the old library that struck a chord, the place where Paulie
weas happiest in his life, until time caught up with him and the developer that
destroyed Bertrand’s Island destroyed his life by building a new library which
he did not qualify to remain the director (and a greedy city clerk who had the
credentials and essentially drove him out of his dream job).
Hank, who passed away in 1995, once dreamed we would all
grow old together, and would sit on a porch somewhere in rocking chairs, making
rude remarks about the world. I think of the dream every time I hear the
Beatles’ song, “When I’m 64,” and realize the folly of trying to predict the
future. It rarely comes out the way we anticipate.
I go back to Passaic frequently but many of the institutions
that we attended back then are gone, the Quick Chek, the Fotomat, Pure Foods,
even the bank where Paulie deposited the daily receipts from the Fotomat. The health
food story and its own Mary are also long gone, and though the neighborhood remained
in tact for many years, it is being transformed in a place where even the poor
cannot afford to live in, the one big attraction we as artists had found in it.
Garrick said his aunt’s apartment complex where we lived is
due for demolition to make way for more luxury housing, and I feel the loss,
the way the old Dutch farmers did in the late 1800s when the Italians (including
my great, great Grandfather) began carving up the farms to build housing for factory
workers – hardly the rich who are taking over the world today, but close, a
massive change in the perception of the world we live in.
Paulie managed to stay ahead of the curve long enough to
live his life unscathed, dying just prior to COVID and the massive changes that
caused. While he watched Hopatcong become a bedroom community to the wealthy,
he managed to move to a trailer where he could continue to live his life on his
own terms, a trailer demolished after his death and its place in the trailer park
taken over by a newer trailer he could not have afforded to live in.
Living in this part of the world is a tragedy in that we are
watching the past bulldozed by a future that has no use for what we consider
important, needing newer and better and more expensive, rather the merely
comfortable. Even the towns I cover are seeing the older generation driven out
as the government seeks to find wealthier people so they can pay higher taxes
the poor and elderly cannot afford.
There is something of a curse to living too long, but not
every generation suffers this. For nearly 100 years, our values and
institutions survived this tendency to push the old out of the way, especially the
generation that survived the Great Depression and World War II, a generation
largely gone from this mortal coil, leaving us – the babyboomers – to some how
deal with the adjustment – an adjustment we really were not prepared for,
mistakenly assuming everything would largely remain as it was, when in fact,
nothing can ever stay the same forever. Everything fades away.
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