We were heading north to Ellenville and just happened to come back south near enough to see the signs that pointed in his direction.
I had spoken with Garrick the day before on his 70th birthday – always forgetting which year he was born in, and getting it straight only after asking him again.
Hank was always the middleman in age – and would have turned 71 on Christmas Eve had he survived this long.
We all knew Hank would die relatively young. But Pauly was the surprise.
Others assumed Garrick would go next since he was overweight and vulnerable. But he is like a Sherman tank, surviving through the worst if not unscathed, then at least not too damaged.
Even COVID seemed unable to get him, passing over him like the angel of death as if he had spread lamb’s blood over his doorway.
He still works in what is considered a critical profession making latches for military and medical equipment. He simply abandoned his tendency to make social visits, going to and from work with a stop over at some food establishment where he picked up his meals to bring home.
Our trip was a repeat trip from August when we accidentally came across the mountain to Ellenville in search of Monticello and Max Yascur’s grave. We by passed the lookout we stopped at this time, gawking at the vast valley that opened before us and the drips of ice that covered the walls of stone behind us as we looked out.
We drove back through Port Jervis where Garrick and Alf had stopped for lunch on their way to Woodstock 51 years ago, losing ourselves briefly in the crisscross of highways until we found Route 23 that took us up to High Point – another overlook – and then down into New Jersey again.
Off this path were roads that would have taken us back to the place where Pauly died had we chosen to take them, taking note of them instead as if markers in yet a mystery tour we are not yet ready to take, though aware of how Pauly had already taken them. But there is no place in this state we could go without being reminded of him, the signs to places he lived, bars Hank and I went to without him (such as in Sussex and Hamburg (me wondering if Hank the Beatles lover ever got the irony of our going to this place to sing to Beatles songs on the bar jukebox), then down to West Milford, passing the turn off to Melody Lake where the band once played for a biker’s picnic, passed the turn off to Smoke Rise where the band won at battle of the bands and a recording contract that would never lead to fame, and finally along the slice of Route 46 where we as kids hung out, each diner a holy place, even though the names have changed, sideroads leading to the heart of Pauly’s childhood I could no longer bear to take.
I thought of him the whole time, being the first birthday, we might celebrate after his passing in January – and recalling how his birth announcement had been delayed until early in the year as if to indicate he would pass in the same month that records recorded his birth so many years ago.
Now, our time on this mortal coil, our part in this play of life, is almost done, and soon we will like Pauly step off it having had our brief time to strut.
Surviving is almost too much to bear since the stage grows emptier with every year.
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