IT GETS IN MY HEAD

There’s a song that keeps playing in my head from way back in the 50’s. It started when I was driving through a place called Patchogue, NY, here on Long Island. I was on my way to visit my mother at the rehab home where she is staying after making her pre-paid funeral arrangements, and noticed how all the landmarks I once knew were no longer there.

They're not making the skies as blue this year
Wish you were here
As blue as they used to when you were near
Wish you were here

My first freelance job for Rollic Inc.

One landmark in particular, an icon really, had disappeared and a small lot is in its place. The building occupied the corner of Grove and Main Streets and stood there as a fortress with block windows and red brick walls, and Rollic Inc. employed a good deal of locals, manufacturing children’s clothes for Sears and Roebuck, now known as Sears, In my high school and college years, Rollic Inc., was a source of funds for my college education, as well as two sisters. Across the street on Grove stood a lumber yard, and when we came from Brooklyn to visit my cousins when I was young, I would look for the landmark combo of Rollic Inc. and the Lumber yard, and I knew we were seconds away from our destination. Now there is an empty lot as if the fortress was blown away, and instead of a lumberyard stands a bank, a small building with a big parking lot.

But that was true throughout the ride through Patchogue, the old LILCO building, the luncheonette where I had my coffee breaks, the barber shop on the corner where John the barber talked baseball with me, the stationary store where I bought the newspaper and cigarettes, all gone, under new names with different goods and services!

And the mornings don't seem as new
Brand-new as they did with you
Wish you were here
Wish you were here
Wish you were here

The old Lace Mill in West Patchogue on Main Street

Little vignettes appeared in my mind, flashbacks from childhood and high school and my college days, running like a highlight film from the past. Familiar faces suddenly appeared and people long gone came to life once again.

Someone's painting the leaves all wrong this year
Wish you were here
And why did the birds change their song this year
Wish you were here

I guess it all makes sense, as I drive to my destination, and the harsh reality that mom is no longer the same either! Yet even the back roads where once a duck farm stood, with a stench so bad you HAD to hold your nose to pass it, there stood an emptiness of remnants and weeds, a silent monument to what was once the pride of Long Island industry and my childhood.

They're not shining the stars as bright
They've stolen the joy from the night
Wish you were here
Wish you were here
Wish you were here

As I make my turn into the road that brings me to the rehab home, I see the hospital, the place where my sister was born, and I went through an ordeal back in the mid-seventies, and where Mom would volunteer her time, where dad fought his battle with cancer before they sent him home to die, once a simple one story building now multi-storied and expanded, with an additional building across from it and realize the world is changing.

Someone's painting the leaves all wrong this year
Wish you were here
Why did the birds change their song this year
Wish you were here

There is no way to recall the years past I guess except in our minds, and maybe I don’t really want to. Mom has lived a long time and for that we are grateful as a family. Now I find comfort in my wife and home, a little place on the earth where I go to retreat and enjoy her company.  The younger generation of family members have all branched out into the world and leave me feeling very proud of their accomplishments, and I think back to the little apartment on Hull Street in Brooklyn, where 4 of mom and dad’s 5 offspring came from, how humble that was and how poor we lived in terms of money, but rich in closeness and tradition and I know…

They're not shining the stars as bright
They've stolen the joy from the night
Wish you were here
Wish you were here
Wish you were here!