When I was just a boy in the 1950s, my dad's grandmother's sister had a bungalow on Pennsylvania Avenue in Long Beach, Long Island. Aunt Betty invited us to stay for a week. I fell in love with the place.
When Aunt Betty and Grandma cooked the Abruzzese way, it was heavenly. The aroma of their tomato sauce with light garlic, along with whatever else they were cooking—even their fresh salad with olive oil and red wine vinegar—transported me to an imagined Italy where their parents were from.
Uncle Bill, Aunt Betty's husband, would come out on Sunday from his restaurant on 187th Street and Arthur Avenue in the Bronx with a four-inch-thick prime sirloin steak. The best we could afford was chuck steak, which my mother fashioned into the best steak pizzaiola on the planet. Uncle Bill's steak was next level. The aroma of the steak on the outside grill mixed with the sweet smell from the honeysuckle tree in their tiny backyard was sublime.
I still remember the caw made by the gulls as they flew over the house and the smell of salty sea water from the deep blue Reynolds Channel three houses away. In the mornings, the tinkle of milk bottles delivered by the milkman woke me just after sunrise. A bit later, a delivery truck driver would toot his horn, calling out "DUGAN'S BREAD."
Pennsylvania Avenue in those days was a wide street with a flower garden that ran down the middle for the length of the block. It was like smelling the best perfume imaginable. This was a far cry from the tenement we lived in on Clinton Avenue and 180th Street in the Bronx.
In the mid-1960s, my parents bought a small bungalow on Vermont Street in Long Beach. By that time, we were living in the James Monroe Projects. Long Beach once again became our great escape.
From the time I was thirteen to sixteen years old, I spent as much time as possible during the summers at Vermont Street. Every year, when my dad pulled up to open the bungalow, there was a car with Illinois license plates parked directly across the street—a station wagon with surfboard racks on top. The family was usually there before we were.
They had one child. A girl my age. She was a drop-dead blonde, about five foot four, with a surfer's athletic body and always in a bikini. When she walked by carrying the surfboard under her arm or on top of her head, she would wave to me. For three years, she would wave when she first saw me. I'd wave back with a silly grin on my face.
When the waves weren't good, she sat alone on the beach in a Cubs hat with her surfboard beside her. Not having the nerve to go over and introduce myself, I sat on the beach like a lost soul, imagining her story. Sometimes when she passed me on the beach during the day or at night, she would smile. I smiled back like a moron.
First of all, I couldn't swim. I still can't, even today. I was frightened of the water by my neurotic Sicilian grandfather and my impatient Abruzzese father. Dad tried to teach me to swim once at a public pool when I was about eight or nine, but he would grit his teeth in annoyance when I wasn't instantly swimming like Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan. I think Dad was embarrassed by me. I had more ticks than a grandfather clock, and it pissed him off.
After he died when I was in my thirties, my mom said that Dad and I really never clicked. I suppose it was my fault.
I wanted so much, every day, to approach the blonde surfer. Watching her crash the waves every day was torture. All I had to do was go over to her during a break and say something—anything.
"You're a Cubs fan? Ernie Banks is great."
"Do you live in Chicago? I'm from the Bronx."
"Do you like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones? Or the friggin' Beach Boys?"
Something. Anything.
This went on for three solid summers. At the end of each summer, when her parents packed up and loaded their station wagon, she would turn before getting in and wave to me.
