Happy birthday Garrick Dec. 27, 2024
Today is Garrick’s birthday, the last of three best friends
with whom I’ve shared a majority of my life, all born the December, although in
different years.
Garrick, born in 1949, was Pauly’s earliest friend, having
met him as kids in what was then called West Paterson, a love-hate relationship
that continued right up until Pauly’s death in 2020.
Garrick, a burly, somewhat laid back character, whose family
moved around a lot when he was a kid, used to brag about that moment at
midnight when he and Pauly were the same age – Pauly born on Dec. 28, 1948, and
Garrick, Dec. 27, 1949.
The two boys met on the street the bordered West Paterson and
Paterson, when Garrick found Pauly sitting on the curb playing with toy
soldiers.
It was a moment that would define the rest of their lives
since Pauly soon learned that Garrick had a portable radio and a full set of
Hardy Boys books, both of which Pauly borrowed, returning the radio later
broken. He never returned the books.
Oddly enough, the two of them crossed paths with me even
though I didn’t know it at the time. Both sets of parents moved around a lot
and for a brief time relocated in my neighborhood on the Clifton-Paterson
border. Both managed to attend Kindergarten at St. Brendan’s slightly ahead of
my arrival there, all of us had Mrs. Grady as our Kindergarten teacher, a fact I
did not learn until we were well into middle age.
Garrick’s family had moved to Crooks Avenue on the Paterson
side, a block from where I lived with my grandparents on the Clifton side.
Pauly’s family had taken up an apartment on Getty Avenue a few blocks deeper
into Paterson, another fact I did not come to realize until many years later
when we came to visit Wayne Hoover and his family and Pauly recognized the
apartment as one he had lived in.
Pauly became the lead singer of a local bar band with
Garrick working as the sound man.
Garrick being a frugal man even then fronted the band with
equipment, often never getting his investment back, sometimes not even getting paid
for his effort.
In the early 1970s, Garrick fell in love with a woman that
would become the love of us life, and lived in Little Falls. Pauly being the
con man recognized a kindred spirit in this woman, which is why she came to
hate him. Pauly was there to pick up the pieces when she dumped Garrick for some
rich man, and later, when Pauly’s romance fell apartment, Garrick reciprocated by
letting Pauly move in with him into one of the apartments we all eventually
lived in at different times in Passaic, in a complex owned by Garrick’s aunt.
Pauly eventually got an apartment there on his own, but could not keep up on
the rent, got evicted and then moved in with Garrick again in an attic room.
All moved out when Garrick’s aunt sold the place, leaving me as the last
remaining of the old gang, until I finally moved out on New Years 1989-1990.
For a brief period, Pauly moved in with me in the large Passaic apartment
before moving on to live with another mutual friend.
Garrick moved in with other relatives, first in West
Paterson, and eventually Totowa, and most recently Elmwood Park (formerly East
Paterson) with a brief stink living with Hank (the other of my three best
friends).
Hank’s death in 1995 and later Pauly’s in 2020 (prior to COVID)
must have hurt Garrick deeply, and so, this time of year, when Pauly’s birthday
comes (and Hank’s, who was born on Dec. 24), because it raised in all of us
this sense of morality. Hank’s death was no surprise since he had been ill for
years. But Pauly’s death of a heart attack hit hard. It was Garrick that called
me mid-January to inform me of “the sad news” and each year this time, I can
still hear his voice over the phone, full of pain.
I think Garrick was also surprised that he had outlived
Pauly, because Garrick has always been less healthy (despite his Winnie the
Pooh phase of eating honey and other healthier foods).
Life, of course, is always the saddest of stories, because
the end is always the same, not the stuff of romantic movies.
I suppose I’ll have to make the call just to make sure
Garrick’s all right.
One never knows.
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