{"id":549,"date":"2006-10-05T15:58:37","date_gmt":"2006-10-05T23:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/10\/05\/my-hometown\/"},"modified":"2006-10-05T15:58:37","modified_gmt":"2006-10-05T23:58:37","slug":"my-hometown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/10\/05\/my-hometown\/","title":{"rendered":"My Hometown"},"content":{"rendered":"

JET AIRLINER<\/strong><\/p>\n

Riding along on this big old jet plane
I’ve been thinking about my home<\/em><\/p>\n

They tell you if you’re gonna crash, right?<\/p>\n

I was cured of flight fright by Jay Krugman, who, on a particularly bad flight into Denver, convinced me the odds were just too low.\u00c2\u00a0 I might die on the highway, in the bathroom, but my life wasn’t going to end in an airplane crash.<\/p>\n

Do Bose Quiet Comfort headphones come with a business class ticket?\u00c2\u00a0 Funny how everybody got the memo.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it’s word of mouth.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to hear anything on the plane, you’ve got to have ’em.\u00c2\u00a0 And everybody with ’em was ENRAPTURED by "The Devil Wears Prada".\u00c2\u00a0 Felice said you could understand it just by watching the pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I did for a while, until I pulled down my laptop and fired it up and realized I was hooked and pulled the Bose plug from my Mac and drove it into the plane’s system, to hear the hackneyed dialogue of the obvious plot that I was enjoying so much ANYWAY.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean no wonder the film was a hit, it wasn’t HIGH CONCEPT!<\/p>\n

And after contemplating Meryl Streep’s comment that everybody wants to be like us, rich, powerful and…\u00c2\u00a0 They announced we were arriving early.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you ALWAYS arrive early, unless you’re DREADFULLY late, because they pad the flight plan with so much extra time.<\/p>\n

And we’re flying into Queens and we’re about 125 feet above the water\/ground and suddenly the plane LURCHES to the right.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve experienced sudden moves like this a mile up, in the clouds, but NOT SO CLOSE TO THE GROUND!<\/p>\n

The plane is deathly quiet.\u00c2\u00a0 I can see from the window that we weren’t going in the right direction.\u00c2\u00a0 And we were going so fucking FAST!<\/p>\n

And now we’re dropping.\u00c2\u00a0 But we’re still going as fast as we were in the sky.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re not floating down, rather we’re bearing right down on the ground.\u00c2\u00a0 My eyes started bugging out.\u00c2\u00a0 Was this IT?<\/p>\n

I didn’t even get to review my life.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I thought about it for a second, but I was just too freaked out.<\/p>\n

And then we were down.\u00c2\u00a0 SCREAMING along the runway.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’m thinking of all those planes that overshoot their destination, that just can’t stop, and end up in the drink.\u00c2\u00a0 The hangars are a blur.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re going a couple of hundred miles an hour down the runway.\u00c2\u00a0 And just when I was convinced it was over, the engines reversed, and we slowed down.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t let it go.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed to know.\u00c2\u00a0 What exactly HAPPENED?\u00c2\u00a0 Did an engine fail?\u00c2\u00a0 I planned on quizzing the pilot, as he smiled and said goodbye.\u00c2\u00a0 But the cabin door remained closed.\u00c2\u00a0 And finally, I just walked off the plane.<\/p>\n

MY FATHER’S GUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

From this day on I own my father’s gun
We dug his shallow grave beneath the sun<\/em><\/p>\n

I took Felice to Jennings Beach.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I heard "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" as I awaited my french fries.\u00c2\u00a0 On through Southport to Westport, where we had lunch on Main Street.<\/p>\n

And then after being unable to find the school where I went to summer camp when I was nine, we went left on Black Rock Turnpike over Samp Mortar Lake, under the Merritt Parkway, past the reservoir to Aspetuck Valley Farms.\u00c2\u00a0 For some Macoun apples and cider donuts.<\/p>\n

And on the way back, we stopped in at Sunny Daes and shared some pumpkin ice cream.\u00c2\u00a0 And then as we crawled up Black Rock Turnpike, and I pointed out the spot where my father had brokered a deal for the first Friendly’s in town, I realized up at the end of the drag, on top of the hill, he was buried.<\/p>\n

I could never go before.\u00c2\u00a0 I just couldn’t handle it.\u00c2\u00a0 But with Felice by my side I creeped through the open gate and parked my mom’s Lexus.\u00c2\u00a0 And after reassuring Felice I knew where his headstone was, I retraced the steps I’d taken thirteen years before, when we’d unveiled his headstone.<\/p>\n

And there it was.\u00c2\u00a0 Exactly where I remembered it.\u00c2\u00a0 Without a day of wear.\u00c2\u00a0 The etching in the granite said "LEFSETZ".<\/p>\n

So strange to see your own name.<\/p>\n

But it didn’t have his first name, no other information.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I looked down at my feet and saw a small stone buried in the ground, with his name, and his birthday, and the day of his death.\u00c2\u00a0 It said "Loving husband and father."<\/p>\n

That he was.<\/p>\n

I started talking to him.\u00c2\u00a0 Telling him I wished he was still here.\u00c2\u00a0 To know that Felice’s father gave her a grand piano for her wedding.\u00c2\u00a0 If only he could have met her father…I can see the shiteating grin on his face.\u00c2\u00a0 So wide, and lasting so long he wouldn’t even be able to speak.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d tell everybody on his travels.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d be proud.<\/p>\n

I wanted to make my father proud.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I felt he couldn’t understand half of who I was and what I was into.<\/p>\n

Tears came to my eyes.\u00c2\u00a0 I hadn’t predicted this.<\/p>\n

Felice was crying too.<\/p>\n

And then I regained my composure and said we were going to go.\u00c2\u00a0 Because that’s what he’d do.\u00c2\u00a0 He was creeped out by death, he had no time for it.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d leave the cemetery immediately, and jump on the phone.<\/p>\n

I told him he’d set the family up pretty good.\u00c2\u00a0 The money hadn’t run out yet.\u00c2\u00a0 And then walked away.<\/p>\n

And as I did, I saw the rocks on top of the other headstones.<\/p>\n

I should have brought one.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t take one from another grave.<\/p>\n

I saw a stone wall.\u00c2\u00a0 But being New England, I didn’t have to go that far.\u00c2\u00a0 In a space where no one had been buried yet, I found a rock.\u00c2\u00a0 And one for Felice too.\u00c2\u00a0 And we went back to my father and laid them atop his headstone.<\/p>\n

MY OLD SCHOOL<\/strong><\/p>\n

And I’m never going back to my old school<\/em><\/p>\n

And from there we went to the split level I grew up in.\u00c2\u00a0 That my mother only moved from two years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 There were two Subarus in the driveway, a gray-haired woman even came out to pick up the mail.\u00c2\u00a0 But I couldn’t get out of the car.\u00c2\u00a0 It was still our house.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t want to be disabused of this notion.<\/p>\n

Then I showed Felice Fairfield Woods.\u00c2\u00a0 The school I attended K through 8.<\/p>\n

And then after working our way through the project, we were at Andrew Warde High School, home of the MUSTANGS???<\/p>\n

It’s the EAGLES!<\/p>\n

But when the boomers moved out, before they moved back in and had kids, they’d consolidated the two high schools in town into one.\u00c2\u00a0 But now they’d split them up again.\u00c2\u00a0 And Warde had reclaimed its name, but not its mascot.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell it was like the seventies didn’t even EXIST!\u00c2\u00a0 The banners in the gymnasium and the trophies in the case barely went back to the previous century.<\/p>\n

Yes, I went in.\u00c2\u00a0 For the first time in THIRTY YEARS!<\/p>\n

Around the back, by the cafeteria, a door was open.\u00c2\u00a0 And on a whim, not being afraid of teacher retribution, we went inside.<\/p>\n

I showed Felice my old home room.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I took Biology, and Modern European History.\u00c2\u00a0 And when she ducked into the handicapped bathroom to pee I strode into the boys’ lavatory to do the same, where I’d gone HUNDREDS OF TIMES BEFORE!<\/p>\n

It was EXACTLY THE SAME!\u00c2\u00a0 The urinals, the toilets.\u00c2\u00a0 THE SAME FIXTURES!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, there were new sinks, but it was like I’d just been there yesterday.<\/p>\n

Well, not really.\u00c2\u00a0 I no longer felt the tug.\u00c2\u00a0 The feeling I had to get out of there before some teacher chided me for walking the halls during class, before I had nightmares about homework due.\u00c2\u00a0 On one hand, it was like I’d never even been there.\u00c2\u00a0 Which felt good.\u00c2\u00a0 Since I had so many bad feelings.\u00c2\u00a0 High school sucked.<\/p>\n

I showed Felice where the cool kids hung out.\u00c2\u00a0 On the radiator in front of the Headmaster’s office (a fancy name for Principal, this was and still is a public school.)<\/p>\n

Mrs. Hurley’s room.\u00c2\u00a0 Where she had an article about Arlo Guthrie from "Time" tacked to the bulletin board.<\/p>\n

To the library, to the auditorium.<\/p>\n

And then it hit me.\u00c2\u00a0 All the WORK I’d done here, all the PRESSURE!\u00c2\u00a0 To get good grades, to get into a good college.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like that was a different person, I could never do it again.<\/p>\n

NEW ENGLAND<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m gonna tell you all about how much I love New England<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you know this Jonathan Richman song?<\/p>\n

Roadrunner!<\/p>\n

By time Jonathan got traction I was already living in L.A.<\/p>\n

But part of me is still here, in New England.<\/p>\n

It’s been decades, but I could slide back in in a second.<\/p>\n

But part of me is reluctant.\u00c2\u00a0 I belong in Los Angeles, where the most important thing is what kind of car you drive, not where you went to college, not who your parents are.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s just phony enough for me.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s so into their own trip that they don’t give a shit about you, you’re FREE!<\/p>\n

But these are my roots.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can never deny your roots.<\/p>\n

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