House For Sale

So over a year ago, I drove D2 to the house on Long Island where I grew up. We were parked out front, and the nice old lady who owned it came out -- we talked. It was the woman my parents SOLD the place to in 1979.  We talked -- she was such a sweetheart -- she had heard my Mom passed away and said a "prayer for huh" in perfect LI accent.  She told me she planned to sell, finally, to be closer to her grandkids in Suffolk County. She also told me to look up her son, Mark, on Facebook. Mark was a toddler when they moved in -- he was now a grown man, with kids of his own.

I indeed friended Mark, and over the years we've traded tales of growing up on Charles Lane. He went to Catholic school, so no East Broadway/Salk Junior High/MacArthur High experience for him. But he also had a great childhood there -- the saddest part being his father dropping dead of a heart attack, as mine did.

Well, the other day Mark posted a cheer for the Yankees -- they made the playoffs. I commented that the house was a Mets house, even though my parents both grew up in the Bronx, but indeed we shifted to the Bombers in the late 70s when the Mets were unwatcheable and the Yanks had Reggie Jackson. I have warm memories of watching games with my Dad -- he called a famous Graig Nettles home run right before it happened.  Mark thanked me for the warm sharing, but said, alas, his mother was putting the house up for sale this weekend. I saw the Zillow posting.

Charles Lane was the only address I knew from childhood. We moved there when I was 2, and left a month before I turned 18. It seemed we lived there FOREVER, but in fact we've now been in Villa Wifey longer. And Mark's family has lived there nearly 40 years! Talk about a legacy address...

I was so fortunate to have a wonderful childhood. I played with neighbor kids -- baseball and football in the yards, and basketball in a half court my Dad had put in for me in the back yard. I knew every neighbor on the street. Mel, a Grumman engineer, who helped build the Lunar Landing Module, and had such bad arthritis he walked completely bent over. The Perotas across the street -- classic Italian family, with Big Jimmy working as a paper distributor for the Times, but reading only the News. Still, early Sunday am he'd drop off the huge paper to several of us, and Dad would always thank him by leaving bagels or crumb cakes on his doorstep.

Next door the kindly old Larkins, who sold to the power couple the Cunninghams. The Dad Tom looked like a Kennedy, and had a pretty blonde wife and 2 pretty blonde daughters. Tom worked on Wall Street, and became a big shot and his wife found out he was tapping into talent at work -- they divorced. They had a black cat named Tabitha, after the girl on Bewitched, and while I was petting it scratched me and opened a gash on my forearm, forever planting in me a distrust and dislike of cats. To this day I avoid them.

Across the street, next to the Perotas were the Schonbergs, with a weird son who was a CPA and never left home. He bought the block's first Mercedes -- and told us all it cost $28K. My friends started calling him "28 Bonzo."

As I aged, my friends and I spent countless hours in my 12 x 15 room, listening to records and talking endlessly about life. Eric became a computer engineer in California, but not a wealthy one -- but still did well enough that he only works half a year and travels the rest. Mark also got an electronics degree and has worked for the same scanning company since the 80s. He married Rita, a classmate early who got sent to Catholic school later. Mike became a printer, and hurt his back in his early 30s -- been living off the fat of the state all these years. He fishes in the Great South Bay daily -- lives with his fellow bachelor brother Bobby, a retired FDNY guy, and they're like the Ed Norton movie "Brothers McMullen." And John, the smartest but without good grades, started at community college, caught fire academically, and ended up in the CIA, where he captured and interrogated Saddam Hussein and wrote a best seller about it. And, now they're making a movie about his book, and we all joke on FaceBook that he needs to be played by some dashing young actor, like Armie Hammer...

Years ago, we had neighbors who were Jamaican Chinese. They told us that they believed that houses have souls, and an owner must insure that whoever buys the house after them sells it to appropriate people. They gave our friends Mike and Loni a great price because they knew there'd be a fine family moving into a house that had brought much luck to them -- until Hurricane Andrew smashed it up.

Maybe they're right. If so, we sure sold to a great family, who got 4 decades of joy on Charles Lane. I hope the next stewards likewise find happiness.

My dream was to give the Ds the same security in a home I had. We moved to Villa Wifey when they were 12 and 9.   This house has always meant sanctuary to them, wherever in life they have roamed. It's a lovely thing, I think.

So farewell, Charles Lane split level. And thanks for the memories...