Erasmo doesn’t live here anymore!

When my grandmother was still alive, it didn’t take much for us kids to get under her skin. And whenever she was at the breaking point, her favorite refrain would be said in her best broken English, “…..I go Eetaleee eh no comma backa no mo’”, or loosely translated, “I’m going back to Italy and the hell with all of you”….or words to that effect.

Well, were she to go back, (and she did for a short vacation back in 1963), she’d have found a vastly different place than the one she left behind in 1928!

I too have had that same feeling…..I’ve been there too…..although I didn’t have to go to “Eetaleeee”as she would have put it, but to “Brook-ah-leen”, which is a short ride from Manalapan, but may as well be a world away!

Not long ago, when visiting the eye doctor, just to satisfy my curiosity, I passed through what I lovingly refer to as “the neighborhood”….that place I left behind 21 years ago to raise my little girl in the bucolic setting of Central Jersey. I look for the people I left behind, the little kid I used to take to Pizza Park…the guy who used to work long hours in the bakery…the wannabe wise guys hanging out by the social club. Kids hanging out on the “corner”. Pizza Park’s still there, but there’s no sign of the wise guys…the kids…..nothing! I guess I should have known….even the Sopranos moved to suburbia!

Actually, I knew I was in a different place when I came upon 3 kids hanging out on a street corner…..members of a “rainbow coalition” if you will…..2 African-American youths and a white boy. How odd it all seemed! Because that coalition on that very street corner would have gotten someone killed just 25 short years ago! "Yes, the neighborhood’s not the same"…..I said to myself with a chuckle!

So now I’m thinking, “there has to be somebody left….” sort of like the ‘last of the Mohecans”. Ahh, no such luck……no “Jimmy the Butcher”, “Charlie the Barber”..gone, replaced by an Israeli fruit vendor….Bennie the Bum, Peg Leg Artie, all having a cup of coffee in that great candy store in the sky...and the candy store itself is now a “cheap charlie’s” kind of a place! Jeez! And our bakery? Well, that didn’t make the cut either! It’s now an upscale clothing store! Well, we knew it wasn’t gonna last anyway. The only thing the new arrivals bought was an occasional piece of yeast to make their own bread. You gotta figure that went over well with my grandmother, as she'd get up from her chair, lumbering over to the counter….cursing under her breath in Italian. “What, they can’t they at least buy a couple of rolls?”

No, it’s pretty much all gone….except for the memory. And even though there’s a bit of melancholy whenever I go there, I always take some delight in the knowledge that it will always be a big part of who I am….despite the luxury condos and upscale clothing stores! Come to think of it, even the place that’s become my adopted hometown has grown beyond anything I would ever have thought it would.

Who knows. Eventually when I become a North Carolina guy, New Hampshire guy, Delaware guy, or God forbid, even a Florida guy, I know that when I make the trip to my new old haunt, I’ll bemoan the fact that Gordon’s Corner Road has become Interstate 395!