A Wick full of memories April 13, 2024
As it turned out we did not make the trip to Asbury Park as
planned, too weary from too long a week at work. We stayed local and then made
our way to the Wick in Earth Rutherford for dinner, a place a few blocks away
from where we lived when we first got together.
The history goes back to the early 1980s when I dated a girl
named Susan from college, who had grown up in Rutherford – the Wick being the
center of social life for teenagers at the time (and perhaps still is the way
West Dinner and Kalico Kitchen for us back in the late 1960s in West Paterson).
It wasn’t a long relationship. I was the rebound kid she needed
temporarily to get over her breakup with her childhood sweetheart, a high
school romance that had continued into the college, but fell apart when both
graduated and steered their lives towards other places.
She had mistakenly assumed that his friends were her
friends, when it turned out, she was not really a member of the gang.
She made a similar mistake when she decided to move on from
me and assumed that my clutch of male friends were hers. She was particularly
fond of Paulie (and I actually thought would make a good match because they
both were so brilliant, and I had adopted George Harrison’s philosophy in
regards to Eric Clapton taking up with his wife Patty Boyle – better known from
the song Layla). But Paulie had only one love in his life, something he
continued to pine after until his death in January 2020 (with one short
sidetrack during his late 30s when he got infatuated with a 17 year old girl).
I returned to the Wick a number of times since, including a
meeting with John Telson, who I had worked with at the cosmetic place in the
mid 1970s and later at a wine import place. This took place just after 9/11 and
John was already very ill (ultimately succumbing to his illness), a kind of
ghost dance for both of us, and a meeting of friends who knew life paths would
not allow us to reunite again after that).
While we still go there from time to time, I guess my
meeting with Garrick there last year scares me a bit, since Garrick, along with
Paulie and Hank are my closest and dearest childhood friends (Hank passed away
in 1995), and he remains the last of our Fab Four, much in the way Paul
McCartney and Ringo are, and I need to make sure that what happened with John
doesn’t happen with Garrick, and our trip to the Wick only reminded me I need
to reconnect again soon as to not have yet another sad memory to recount when we
travel there for food.
We did not see the old man there this time, the owner who
traditionally wanders through the restaurant greeting people, an icon I recall
from my earliest trips there, and with the cloud of doubt about Garrick
hovering over me, I feared we might not see him again (although I’m pretty sure
we will.)
Of course, this depressing trip down memory lane also
reminded me of Susan, and that odd moment when she stayed with me in my cold
water flat in Passaic, when a one-night-stand I had picked up previously at
Kimberly’s (while working at with the band and who coincidently also lived in Rutherford)
pounded on the door while I was making love to Susan, telling me through the
locked door that she was pregnant and I was the father (both things turned out
to be untrue, although it was a difficult thing to explain to Susan at that
moment, comic and tragic at the same time),
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