A Boy in da Hood
The boys in the hood are always hard
you come talkin that trash, we'll pull ya card
knowin' nuthin' in life but to be legit'
don't quote me boy cuz I ain't said shit. - From "Boyz in da Hood" by Eazy E (NWA).
Elmont (NY) is a hamlet as well as suburb of New York City in Long Island, Nassau County, New York, in the Town of Hempstead. The population was 32,657 at the 2000 census. At least that's what its Wikipedia entry says and, of course, if it's on the Internet it must be true.
Elmont is also the town where I grew up. I probably bicycled on every one of its streets (always without a helmet) in the 1960's and 1970's at all hours of the day and most of the hours of the night. I never worried about crime. I never worried about anything really.
I played little league there (Elmont Road Park), bowled there every Saturday morning (Argo Lanes), played wiffleball there, played football in the street. I had a Long Island Newsday paper route there and, with the money I earned, I bought vinyl record albums and 45s there -- mostly from Great Eastern (later, Times Square Stores ["TSS"], a K-mart kind of place where I also worked cutting keys for a year or so), but occasionally from E.J. Korvettes if they had a sale.
(Aside: I recently heard that E.J. Korvettes was named after its founders, "eight Jewish Korean War veterans," but I've never gotten around to trying to verify whether that was true or not.)
I got drunk when I was underage there, first smoked pot there, and first learned about girls and rock'n'roll there. And I made a lot of very good friends there, some of whom I'm still lucky enough to hang out with, others who slowly drifted away for one reason or another.
There are many names in the latter category. Joe Yedwab, for instance. I was living outside Washington, DC, when I heard (on New Year's Day, 1985, I believe) that he had shot himself to death while in a hotel room in or near Houston, Texas.
Charlie Powers, for another. Not sure whatever happened to good ole' Charlie. I stopped by his family's home about 20 years ago to discover that he had moved, and I never was able to find a forwarding address for him. Charlie was one of the most upstanding people I had ever met; his father died when he was young, and he always worked (even though high school) to help support the family. I could probably come up with another 20 or 30 people like that; former friends with whom I lost touch.
I liked growing up in Elmont. Things felt safe there in an almost Steven Spielbergian kind of way. The Elmont of my memory is almost always sunny, with friendly people driving clean cars down tree-lined streets, waving to their neighbors. If somebody had a bicycle stolen -- that was shocking news. We knew everybody, and we knew their older brother, and his girlfriend, and we knew her family.
I moved away in 1979 and, other than a brief visit here and there to see some friends or family, I haven't really returned to the NYC metro area for any meaningful amount of time. I lived in Buffalo, NY for four or five years, and then outside Washington, DC, for another four years. When the dust of my life settled, I ended up in Baltimore, MD. And it is here, where folks eat crab meat and root for Ravens and Orioles, that I have set down roots. We own a home here, my kids go to school here, we vote here, we have made a lot of great friends here -- it really is, all things considered, a pretty good life here. So why do I feel that something is missing?
Then it occurred to me. Connections. I'm missing the connections.
I have a friend and business associate here named Evan. Evan grew up in Baltimore and, now at age 46, he lives less than 10 miles from where he grew up. There's a lot of that here; staying put. When I think about the folks I grew up hanging out with -- most of them have moved, in some cases far, away from Elmont. But people don't seem to leave Baltimore very often. They may move in a quieter, cleaner, safer suburb ... but almost universaly a Baltimorean's goal appears to be keeping ties to the town of his or her birth.
The point about Evan is this: whenever he and I are hanging out, whether it is at a lunch counter or a business meeting or a baseball game, he inevitably meets somebody he knew from his youth. And then their conversation turns to connections: "Do you still work with Matt? Is he still married to Debbie Litch's sister? They're divorced? Oh yeah, I think I heard that from Harvey Greenstein. He's in partnership with Anne Halloway, you know? You remember her, Suzie's little sister ...?" So it goes, on and on and on. I actually find it sort of cool to listen to those conversations, as both parties seem to come away from the conversation revived, as if life itself has been reaffirmed. And part of me also wants, really wants, to contribute something to the conversation, to be included in those connections -- but those connections aren't mine, I don't know Anne Halloway or her little sister, so I have nothing to say.
I didn't know how much I missed those connections until recently. As our 30th high school reunion looms a mere two years away, one of my classmates (with the help of several other classmates) set up a website dedicated to the Elmont Memorial Class of 1979. The website permits classmates to email everybody else in the group, to post old pictures, to share connections. It took awhile for the group to find a voice but, then, suddenly (or so it seemed to me) there were about a million emails about the families that I knew growing up in Elmont, and their sisters and parents and neighbors. And I found myself reading these emails and smiling -- I mean stupidly smiling for no reason in particular -- as I learned about what so-and-so is doing now, after being divorced from Satan's Only Daughter.
Even more amazing: I felt a desire ... I mean, an almost physical desire ... to contribute to the conversations. As if some long-built-up wall had burst, the frustration of almost 30 years of hearing about other people's connections while neglecting my own.
Connections. I think that there is something primal about them; there's almost a physical human need to be reminded of who you are and where you came from. Thanks to everybody on the 1979 Reunion List for helping to bring those connections back for me.
posted by Buck Buckman @ 11:58 AM
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