Rant #3,189: My Little Town

Everything happens in Massapequa …

Yes, my adopted hometown—moved here from Queens with my family in July 1971—seems to be the center of everything as life ebbs and flows over the decades.

I brought this up in an earlier Rant last month, where so many things happen in Massapequa and its adjoining Massapequa Park that captures the interest of the nation and often the world.

And there is plenty of good and bad in that—the “Long Island Lolita” ring a bell?—and the past few days have put an apostrophe on that.

We have local, national and international news stories that have happened right here or involve people from right here.

Let’s take the good first.

Massapequa International Little League’s girls’ softball team won its World Series the other day, and this captured the attention of a lot of people, in particular since the media has decided that an out-of-left-field focus on women’s sports is their next path to explore and ram our heads into.

The media over-emphasized our national soccer team for a variety of reasons, but that fell flat as that team failed to capture gold this time around.

And soccer is just a niche sport here, played by a team that was as hard to love as could possibly be, a group that attached politics and anti-America bravado to just about everything they did.

But now, you have a local softball team made up of 12 years olds winning their World Series, and it kind of makes everyone feel good.

Like the Massapequa boys who were successful last year, these are kids playing a kids game not for the money—there is none, of course—but for the fun of it.

And to win the whole enchilada …well, you just know that a parade is in the offing, and it is well deserved.

But on the other side of the coin—not too far away from where that eventual parade will be held--you have a car accident that made headlines not just here, but all over the world, due to the severity of it, shown in the horrible pictures that emerged from the crash site, just about five minutes away from where I live.

An innocent family was out celebrating a job promotion with a jaunt to get ice cream when another car, driven by somebody who was so hopped up on drugs that he was driving more than 150 mph in a 40 mph zone, rammed them in the rear of their car when they were stopped at a light.

Four people have now perished form the impact, at least three of them not knowing what hit them and a fourth passing over the weekend.

The car’s other two occupants are injured to an unsightly degree, and if they survive, they will certainly be hampered for life by these injuries.

The guy that hit them? Well, this moron survived—of course—but was found to have at least cocaine and fentanyl in his body.

The police also found syringes strewn throughout his car, which leads you to believe that he was doing plenty of other stuff beyond what was found in his system.

He also has several other DWIs on this driving record, so this guy has a history of not being much of a choir boy when he gets behind the wheel.

This fool was placed under arrest from his hospital bed, and he faces so many charges that if convicted on all of them, this young man will spend decades in prison.

The images of the family’s mangled car was enough to upset even the most jaded person, as it literally looked like a bomb had been dropped on that car—the reality of which was that that “bomb” was the car being driven by that young doped-up fool.

And an innocent family was pretty much wiped off the face of the earth because this guy needed his kicks and not only got what he needed, but decided to drive when he was higher than the Hubble Telescope.

Totally ridiculous.

And then we have Massapequa’s biggest story, which has already been dubbed the eventual “Trial of the Century” by some, months before it has even convened--The Gilgo Beach Murder, where a Massapequa resident has been charged with the murders of at least three prostitutes and possibly others.

Now it has come out that his wife has cancer and that her medical coverage is running out as her husband sits in jail.

His wife has become the “Sgt, Schultz” of this entire investigation—“I know nu-think”—and you just know that this woman knows plenty more about her husband than she is letting on … maybe not about the murders,, per se, but about her husband’s questionable behavior that might have led up to what he has been charged with doing.

Heck, her kids even have their own separate lawyer, exclusive from their mom’s lawyer. Leading me to believe that what their mother knows hopefully won’t cast a bad light on the kids’ needs going forward.

How could the wife not know anything about her husband’s dalliances?

Seems unfathomable to me, but what do I know?

Maybe love is really blind.

But whatever the case, it all happens in Massapequa and Massapequa Park.

Why?

I don’t know, but it does …

My little town.