So the home town...about half way between Washington and Providence...high on the Palisade Cliffs overlooking the Hudson River and "the city"...as we refer to Manhattan. The cliffs rise some 300 feet over the river front. They were a playground, a place for exploration and "dares," such as swinging from a rope tied to bridge girders...swinging some 50 feet over open space. In quieter moments, the cliffs were a place to find a convenient rock ledge or cave and sit there reading a book, looking up from time to time to note the ship traffic on the river. As kids, the cliffs were a big part of our "open space."
I had gotten the train into "the city" in the morning, then caught the bus (through the Lincoln Tunnel and along Blvd. East). It had been decades since I'd ridden that bus route and, somewhat embarrassed, had to ask how you request a stop. The cord that passengers used to pull to ring a buzzer for the stop was missing. A woman in the seat in front pointed to a small, red button over each row of seats. I got off at 74th Street and walked up the hill. According to Wikipedia, North Bergen, after San Francisco, is the "hilliest" municipality in the United States.
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| Robert Fulton Elementary School |
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| 101 74th Street North Bergen NJ |
So there they all still are: my old apartment house (101 74th Street, apartment 1A), Robert Fulton Elementary School....two blocks further up the hill..., Woodcliff Community Church....further up the hill and two blocks over on 77th Street...the buildings and institutions that structured my early years. But what came into my mind as I walked (a beautiful fall day) were the names of old neighbors, family friends, and kids with whom I went to Robert Fulton. Agnes Wright who had worked with my mother as a secretary in New York before my mother had to leave since she had gotten married...couldn't be married and take the bus every day into "the city." Agnes had remained single. Astrid Johnson...a Norwegian woman who spoke Norsk with my parents after a few highballs. June Shanloogian (we got caught by a policeman picking flowers in the park when we were about seven...."How would you like someone to take off YOUR head." Ted Doll....his father was Mayor; his Mom taught our cub scout troop. Never made it to boy scouts.
But it was not memory that had me catch the 166. Or was it? I had come to have lunch with some of my kindergarten friends...friends whose old apartments, like mine, still hold multitudes. Well some of us actually had single-family houses...funny but I never sensed any class difference in this. We were all part of the same neighborhood, often the same "block." When we were kids, the bar on 75th Street was called the Colonnade, an Irish pub. Now it was The Havana Mambo. A happening spot.
I am not certain that we (Sheila, Nancy (who still lives off 78th Street), and Bernadine) added to that sense of "happening"....but we were loud in our laughter. Sheila is going to host a 50th Class Reunion (of our high school not the kindergarten class....that would make it the 62nd Class Reunion) in June. We met to "plan" the occasion but really we just shared our lives to date...what we'd been doing, what we'd come to believe, and who knew what about our classmates.
So the quick trip to North Bergen was about the present and the future, as much as it was about the past. The neighborhood is vibrant, as it was when we were young. And, somehow, we are still vibrant along with it.
