GHOST OF THE PAST

The residue of the last night’s storm clouds hid the early afternoon sun overhead. Turning left into Main Street Patchogue, I followed the cars ahead of me in single file, looking for all the familiar landmarks. Suddenly, something was amiss! Something was terribly wrong! Where was Rollic Inc., the place I grew up in? Where was the factory that helped me pay for my college education, and fed us as a family?

There on a corner where it once stood, as majestic as an old European cathedral, or any column building in Washington D.C., was an empty space! The red walls and glass block single storied building, a symbol of stability and hard work, of help and agony on hot humid days, the edifice where I grew to appreciate poor people, and vowed never to be one, was gone forever. The building was a special landmark, one that said “Patchogue, NY”, as clearly as the Eiffel Tower says “Paris”.

To Dad, Rollic was a second home, and as his first home, he spoke and took care of it, lovingly. The family of workers was poor, Italian and Irish workers, mostly women who toiled the rows of sewing machines, their heads down, being fed by floor girls, piles of cut cloth that they transformed into colorful overalls or shirts for children.

For me, as a student working part-time, it was a physical challenge. Dad was the boss in the shipping department, and I had to make sure to work harder than anyone else there my age or any age for that matter. I was the boss’s son: no one would justifiably say I was slouching off!

The loading and unloading of 18-wheelers, up and down a long incline or ramp, especially on long hot and humid summer days, with no air-conditioning, a flat tar covered roof the only protection from the elements! Climbing the wooden skeleton shelving, nearly to the rooftop, picking orders and flinging them down into canvas wagons. You couldn’t complain to Dad, he wouldn’t hear it. It was paying my education, giving me money for my empty pockets, and guaranteeing my future.

The people I worked with, students like myself, and poor uneducated workers, with grammar and diction problems, women who could not afford to leisurely live their lives, worked hard hours, believing in only God and country, and often cursing both in their poverty. Dad was considered high paying, he owned an education beyond the eight grade, and so he was paid more, and given responsibilities. To everyone he was: “Tony”, the foreman, the boss, and ‘the’ guy that took care of the back where the big trucks came in and out of.

It is a shame that we can’t save a building like Rollic. It was built in the 1930’s and helped transform Patchogue into a hard working community of post depression generations as a prosperous and productive people.

I myself can’t believe it is gone. When I passed the place it once stood, I thought: “Dad, you are truly gone, now.”