Rant #2,832: Back To Life

I am actually doing something entirely constructive today, something that is going to be fun rather than obnoxious and detrimental to my soul …
 
I am going to meet up with an old friend today for lunch.
 
I have know this friend off and on since we were kids in that then-new universe called Rochdale Village, in South Jamaica, Queens, New York, a neighborhood that literally went up around us as we matured from little kids to early teens.
 
It was incredible seeing the buildings—20 of them—go up from wood all the way to bricks, but what was even more incredible was that we also grew up there, from the age of seven to the age of 14.
 
Those are perhaps the most important years of one’s life, or at least the most important childhood years for sure, and I can say personally that with all that was going on in the neighborhood around us—remember, this was the mid-to-late 1960s in New York City, so there was plenty going on around us—it was a fascinating time to be alive, to see up close a lot of this stuff, to actually live a lot of this stuff, and to have experiences no kid growing up in the suburbs could ever have.
 
We both moved out to the wilds of Long Island in 1971, so at 14 years of age, our New York City experience was over, as kids at least, and while I cannot speak for my friend, I can tell you it took me years to recover and to fit into my new surroundings in the suburbs.

 
But once I did finally fit in, I found it preferable to where I once was, and consequently, I have never left Long Island, and might never venture anywhere else again.

(I will add that I have had no inclination to go back to the old neighborhood for a variety of reasons ... I have not physically been back there since about 1976, and I see no need to go back there ... I have a vision of what the neighborhood was from my childhood, and that is good enough for me.)
 
But when you are a kid—in particular, one of an age in the single digits—you just take it all in, and I certainly did when I lived in this then-brand-new Queens development.
 
That world that rose from the dust of the old Jamaica Racetrack was my own personal oyster, and the things I learned there have stayed with me forever.
 
There is just something about people with a Queens background that is different from the backgrounds of those growing up in the other New York City boroughs and elsewhere.
 
It is difficult to pinpoint it, but I think we have a tolerance for things that others simply don’t … but we also have the ability to figure things out on our own, if necessary, and questions things when we need answers.
 
Having now been married to a Queens girl—from the Rockaways—for nearly 29 years, we have spoken about this subject on numerous occasions, and there is just something about people with Queens “blood” in them that is different from others.
 
But anyway, without being too clinical about it, today should be fun, but it won’t be a nostalgia-fest.
 
Prior to the pandemic, he and I and a group of other former kids of Rochdale all grown up used to meet in Manhattan for dinner a few times a year, and even when we first met up with each other—after some of us not seeing the others for 40 years—it was like we never were apart.
 
The conversation was not forced, it flowed like an active river, and we never had a lapse in conversation, which often centered not on the past, but on current times.
 
We all have our life stories beyond the old neighborhood, we all agree on things and disagree on other things, so the talk was an amalgam of “the old days” mixed with current concerns and stories.
 
Some of us were married, others were not; some of us went through divorces, others did not; some of us had kids, others did not …
 
Some of us were Jewish, others were not; some of us were white, others were not …
 
But we had that common core of growing up in the tumultuous 1960s right in the heart of a lot of the action in an urban Mayberry where everyone knew everybody and everybody was basically in the neighborhood because of the same reasons.
 
Black and white or white and black, we were there because our parents felt that this was an opportunity to rear their families in the best situation possible at the time, and I know that I have thanked my parents many times over the years for making the decision to move to this incredible community.
 
Sure, this Garden of Eden phase didn’t last, but nonetheless, I am proud to have Rochdale Village on my living quarters resume, because it is a place and a situation I will never forget.
 
Suffice it to say that I feel I had the greatest childhood possible, and it all had to do with the ups and downs of Rochdale Village while I was there during those seven incredible years.
 
So when I meet up with others that share this "proudness" I have of having grown up in my old neighborhood when I did, we all just click together like perfect puzzle pieces, and I am sure that this will happen at lunch today.
 
The group of us have not gotten together since the pandemic began two years ago, so even though it will be just two of us rather than six, it will be a start of maybe something big again.
 
Let’s hope so.
 
I need some good news to report to you; I am sick of everything being tainted by the pandemic … I want everything to be happy-laden!
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.