Keeping keeping on Dec. 31, 2024
It got warm again, though the perpetual environmental
chicken littles are predicting polar vortexes from the upcoming year.
I’m planning a walk out to the waterfront while the warm
weather prevails, rain predicted for later so as to drench the poor souls
crowding into Times Square to greet the New Year.
I used to sum up the happenings of the previous year on this
day in previous journals, which I won’t do here. Sometimes, it’s just better to
let the past fade away and not dwell on what was or could have been.
As I read things about former President Carter, the more I
like him, especially his tendency to criticize other former presidents – a man
in the unique position to tell it like it is, even when other people do not
want to hear it.
A man after my own heart.
All of this is a flash back to the 1970s when we all (the Garley
gang) held out hope for a future that did not for the most part materialize,
and though that decade was among the most painful in my life, I would return to
it to relive if only because all the elements for a positive future were in
place at that time, we all planning to become something, expecting our lives to
turn out far better than they did.
I also used to make New Years resolutions. These I have set
aside partly because I’ve never been able to fulfill them. Now, I just want to
keep on keeping on, ending this year better than I did the last, and hope that I
can do the same when the new year concludes.
Pauly’s birthday was three days ago, an event I did not remark
on, although I did pay tribute for Garrick, whose birthday was the day before
that.
Garrick used to make sure he called up Pauly on his
birthday, and now, approaching five years since Pauly’s passing, Garrick must
feel the vacancy – more than I do.
While all years are sad, this year marked the passing of
Craig Carlson, the manager of the greeting card company where Hank and I worked
during the early 1970s, with whom I had kept in contact over the last few year,
emailing him on occasion to check on his progress.
But over the summer, he did not respond, and I only recently
discovered he had passed away in July, his obit speaking to that later part of
his life we did not share. For years, we had assumed Carlson was the perverted
manager of the Fabian Theater, Hank and I had heard tale of while working as ushers
there in the late 1960s. But when I questioned Carlson earlier this year, he
informed me he had worked as manager of the Montawk theater in Passaic, prior
to its turning into a XXX venue. I must have seen him back then without knowing
who he was or our future connection since my childhood best friend Dave and I
went there often (mostly to see James Bond movies).
This time of year I’m always stunned by how life turns out
from what was expected, especially when one of the icons of my life steps off
this mortal coil – such as the recent news about Burger King John.
I’m sure I remember people differently than they remember
themselves, painting a portrait of their exteriors while guessing as to what
they think on the inside. I remember asking Carlson about Nancy, the secretary
at the card company with whom he’d had an affair back then, and who basically
had no use for him later when the company laid us all off. She had needed the
job to pay for her return to college (she was studying to become a teacher) and
abandoned him when he could not longer guarantee her a job.
I remember getting drunk with him and his crying over his
spilled beer. Yet, all these years later, he appeared not to remember who she
was (most likely deliberately) and I dropped the matter.
His death in July almost coincided with the 50th anniversary
our being laid off, and the last time I physically saw him, one more piece of
this jigsaw puzzle missing from the big picture. It amazes me how so many
people live undocumented lives, who come into the world and leave it without
being remembered or celebrated, or whose lives vanish because those who might
remember them are also gone.
What the new year has instore for us, I can’t say. I’m just
keeping keeping on.
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