Monmouth County

Monmouth County Days

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: When this posts on Saturday I will be making my way to the cemetery to see my mom’s mortal remains off. So I apologize that this will be another brief and Pam-centric post.

As I write it is a dark and damp Thursday morning. Coffee is perking, cats have been fed. I woke at 3:00 and two of the cats strolled into my room and onto my bed to keep me company and fight for my attention. It did distract me from my fretting. Gus had the temerity to chase Beau’s tail!

I cut up a watermelon which has been sitting since before mom passed. A friend had brought it by for her. It’s more watermelon than I can eat so I will share it with friends to take home to their kids. After cooking for large numbers of people it is mostly just me now and the food production and consumption is amping way down except when folks stop by to check on me.

Long Branch Poultry Farm, since 1939.

The various machinations of the week have taken me to some locales that I haven’t visited in decades and occasionally requiring amazing feats of memory as I take on the role of navigator for the folks kind enough to drive me on my various rounds.

For example near the funeral home was an ancient poultry farm where my parents used to stop for eggs on our way to or from my grandmother’s house. The friend who was driving me stopped to look at the plants that are now sold outside and the childhood memories flooded back. I probably have not stood in that driveway since I was 12 years old.

Another night someone took me out to dinner at Bahr’s Landing, a waterside seafood restaurant of my childhood. My last trip there was with my sister for my birthday, the year before she died, but it was a family favorite for special occasions as a kid and my late teens and early twenties saw many a late night at the outdoor clam shack for a late night snack and a beer. A week of This is Your Life style fascination.

Extraordinary clouds over the water at Bahr’s Landing restaurant.

Some days have seemed long and others zipped by. Uniformly the nights and early mornings (mom’s best time in recent years) have been difficult. The house itself seems to be in a gentle form of revolt starting with a series of roof leaks (which left me facing a very young man who attempted to sell me a new roof, but instead agreed to just overcharge me for what desperately needed to be done to stop the immediate water incursion) and followed by water in the basement as the result of a broken drainpipe.

A farm stop in Holmdel where geraniums were procured.

My bouts of manic energy have gone into cleaning and the redistribution of things no longer needed. It has also resulted in some gardening which seems to calm me down. Some of those efforts shown on the deck above, a new favorite spot.

After I get through tomorrow on Sunday I will head back to Manhattan and to the office on Monday. The shell will be thoroughly broken and back into the world I go.

Edie’s and Other Jersey Delights; Part One

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This is a Joy of Jersey post. This week I headed down for my regular visit with mom a bit off schedule as we hosted a large dinner at the hall on Friday. We have Election Day off and, as Kim and I had discharged our civic duty over the weekend, I headed down to her on Tuesday afternoon.

Got my fall leaf fix while running in Jersey this week.

It was my last shot at seeing some beautiful changing leaves as I made my daily morning run. I was running shorter distances last year, and I realized I had also missed much of the changing leaves as mom was in the hospital this time last year. (A post about that time can be found here.) That was about the time I changed to a regular schedule of being in Jersey, generally every other week for several days. Anyway, the foliage did not disappoint and I had pretty runs each of the days I was there.

Preparing for our dinner at the hall Monday night.

A good friend, fellow Jersey-ite of my youth, was also going to be visiting while I was there this week. In honor of and in advance of Randy’s visit, I turned my first run to the south to and through the small downtown area nearby called Red Bank. A lovely small commercial area, it was where we kids went to feel grown up. It wasn’t really where we went to get into trouble – there is a beach town in the other direction called Sea Bright which was full of bars which was designated for that (posts about that town can be found here and here), Red Bank, on the other hand, is where you shopped and ate out.

Diner which I frequented, usually in the middle of the night, but occasionally in the morning. It is in a slightly new guise but is otherwise the same.

The bones of Red Bank have remained the same while the denizens have come and gone. Jack’s Record Shop lived on the opposite side of the street in my youth and had a head shop in back – in the days before I knew what that was. It now occupies a spot near where a huge hardware store called Prown’s was. I can still smell the specific dust and fertilizer odor of that store. (They are still in business, but have moved to another location. In fact, they just installed a new backdoor for our garage at Mom’s.) The Woolworth’s is gone as is the Newberry’s, and the Steinbach’s department store, but there is still a coffee shop on the edge of town which is either the most recent incarnation of one of my youth, or a newer version. (It sported wax fruit in the window and my mother used to say, Never eat in a place with wax fruit in the window. It was a good point, but I have frequently eaten in such establishments and lived to tell the tale.)

Another coffee shop – sans wax fruit – where I used to pick up breakfast on my way to see my dad in the hospital nearby.

There was a large photography shop called Dorn’s which lasted into my adulthood, but eventually fell prey to digital photography. I did find this new photo store below which is good news if I eventually start making early process photos again at mom’s. I wrote recently about another family business in time gone-by called Kislan’s – it took care of all of our athletic needs, which were admittedly less diverse in those days. (That post is here if you are interested in the full NJ roundup.) Randy and I spent many hours of our youth, together and separately, in the town of Red Bank. Whether it was pancakes at the diner in the middle of the night, running errands or wandering the small shops on the side streets.

I’d like to have a chance to make friends at this new camera and film shop!

Wednesday and Thursday passed in a blur of work this week, cramming five days of work into three. I staked out time to spend with mom over morning coffee, lunch and tried to end the work day at a reasonable time. Randy showed up in the evening on Thursday and mom got a kick out of seeing him for the first time in decades. Despite sporting a mask for her benefit, mom declared him unchanged.

Along with our friend Suzanne, we had dinner at a restaurant which probably deserves its own post, Tavolo Pronto. This epic establishment is, in my opinion, one of the best things to hit Monmouth County in years. Their sandwiches have carried my through long dark days spent in the hospital and hospice with dad, and now it is my favorite lunch spot during my stints there. Their singular fare will stay linked in my mind with these years of my life, the adult years spent visiting Jersey, and it has comforted me during some bleak times.

Tavolo’s in Fair Haven, NJ.

Friday, Veteran’s Day, was another day off and a plan was cooked up to have breakfast at Edie’s, another local eatery that morning. Suzanne and I are early risers, but Randy hoped to sleep in a bit. This meant I could get a run in, have a coffee with mom and head over for a rare treat. Edie’s was my dad’s territory and favorite breakfast locale. He adopted it late in life and somehow he and I never ate there. The plan was set! Tomorrow, in the second part of this Jersey tribute, I will take you to that surprisingly historic spot which also has great personal significance.