SEPTEMBER 25, 2023 – Dad once pointed out to me that as you age, each increment of time becomes a smaller percentage of your life’s total. “And that,” he said, “is why time seems to accelerate the older you become.” After he’d provided this perspective, each day, week, month, year of my life clicked away at an increasing rate.
Exactly a year after Dad had left us, Byron graduated from Babson. His four years of college passed in half the time my four years of it had. Beth, Cory, and I flew to Boston for commencement ceremonies and to help the graduate move four years’ worth of dorm room accumulations . . . to dumpsters, where any parent could’ve predicted the stuff would ultimately land.
Before flying home to Minnesota, we traveled south to New York for a three-day stay with Jenny and Garrison. Beth and Jenny took the train, while the boys and I rode in Byron’s car. The latter conveyance allowed us to stop at Hamburg for a look around. We lingered for less than an hour, which was sufficient to rekindle my affinity for the place and underscore how vulnerable it was in the hands of UB.
Once in New York, I felt compelled to visit him. He was going on 89, and at that age, anything could happen and with little advance notice. Given the proximity of Rutherford to Manhattan, I needed to give reconciliation another try.
What was likewise improbable was that Beth, Cory, and Byron would want to accompany me. Only Cory had spent meaningful time with UB—during our Montana ski trips—but that had been 14, 15 years before; Beth and Byron had had only one or two passing encounters with him. Perhaps it was curiosity more than anything else that motivated them to join me on the day trip to Rutherford. Over the years they’d heard much about it.
I called ahead—Cliff, of course, not UB. The rendezvous point, Cliff and I decided, should be Cliff’s office on Park Avenue right around the corner from 42 Baghdad Street. He’d make sure UB was on hand and from there we’d all go to lunch at Fisher’s, UB’s favorite spot in Lyndhurst.
As the “coach” commuter bus from Port Authority hurtled down Rutherford’s Orient Way[1], I pushed the overhead “stop” button on the approach to Highland Cross. From there we hiked up to Ridge Road, then descended over the other side to Holman corner—“Ground Zero.”
If the interior of 42 Lincoln was beyond the sight and imagination of all but a select few, so was the exterior hidden from view. UB had allowed the shrubs and trees immediately around the house to grow unchecked, and a tangle of vines had joined the fray. The 100-year old gray stucco mansion was now incarcerated behind a thicket of green so dense that only a large crew armed with chainsaws, cherry pickers, wood-chippers and over-sized dump trucks could stage a rescue. Incongruously, the lawn was trim and otherwise in fine shape, and a high-end American flag furled itself around a sturdy flag pole. Both the lawn and the flag display, I knew, were the work of Angelo.
I led my family to Park Avenue, where we turned and continued to the Fun Ghoul store front. Passing a string of warm greetings by the staff, we found our way to Cliff’s back office.
Seated in the middle of the room, facing Cliff’s desk, was UB in his same old get-up: a grubby corduroy sport jacket over a soiled dress shirt and a red clip-on tie, topped off by his “BOO-ret,” which was in need of washing or better yet, I thought, replacement. Pontificating to a bemused audience of one—namely Cliff—the royal jester, the Road Runner, the indefatigable and uproariously eccentric if not insane man was in his self-defined prime.
He greeted us cheerfully, putting on the charm. I figured it was a peace offensive to block any mention of the unmentionables: the flow of funds to Alex, Mother’s inheritance, and the decrepit state of the properties he controlled and pretended to manage. For the hour-and-a-half we spent on the ground, UB pitched a shutout.
After Cliff likewise greeted us—but genuinely—UB launched into his prepared entertainment. He pulled a paper from the inside pocket of his sport jacket, and smiling at Byron, UB started in on his script: “11 reasons a person should be glad to be done with college.”
“First,” he said, laughing in anticipation of his own humor, “no need to stay up late studying things that will have nothing to do with the rest of your life.”
It went downhill from there for the man who at one time was “all about education.” The one I choked on was the eleventh: “Your parents won’t have to be poor any more.”
Everyone chuckled while Cliff and I shared the same bitter reaction, winking at each other—and laughing too for appearances sake. To diffuse my underlying anger, Cliff proclaimed that it was time for lunch.
“My SUV’s out back,” he said.
Moments later we were on the road to Lyndhurst next door to Rutherford. A few minutes more and we sat crowded around a table in the middle of the hectic eatery. UB took the seat between Byron and me. For the entire time, even as he consumed his soup and half-sandwich, UB turned his whole back toward me and engaged in conversation exclusively with Byron. UB’s periodic repositioning seemed intended to knock me off my chair. There was no mistake about it: he had nothing to say to me and was signaling that I should have nothing to say to him.
Since Byron had just graduated with a business degree and was bound for a job with the French bank, Société Générale, UB—the MBA, Francophile real estate mogul and investment savant—had plenty to say to his grand-nephew. As UB showed off his financial chops, I recalled his sarcastic display of feigned naivete in his terse reply to my proposal for resolving Mother’s inheritance. That was four years earlier—the year Byron had matriculated at Babson. Apparently, I joked to myself, UB had audited Byron’s classes for four years.
To show off to UB a little myself, I took care of the tip and the tab. I doubt if he noticed: somewhere along the line he’d learned that except when he was alone, lunch was always free.
When we returned to Ground Zero, Cliff had to get back to his perpetually frenzied work, leaving Beth, Byron, Cory and me with UB in the wide drive behind 42 Baghdad Street. He wasn’t about to invite us inside—not that Beth would have accepted, knowing from me that it was a garbage house. Conveniently, a retail tenant—Ralph’s of Italy—had recently vacated ground-floor premises of the Holman building facing Highland Cross. Much of the inventory had been abandoned, and UB said we could “have at it.” It wasn’t a gesture of generosity. He needed to dispose of the assorted dress shirts, trousers, silk socks and ties before the space could be relet. Cory and Byron found a few items to their tastes, but for the most part, Ralph’s “Italy” had been the New Jersey version.
After five minutes or so, UB announced that he had “some work to take care of” and would leave us to our own devices.
“Do we get to say good-bye to you later?” asked Beth diplomatically.
His silent departure was his reply.
“I think he just said good-by,” I muttered as the door closed behind him.
I rejoined the boys in picking through the leftover garments. Right after I jokingly called the clothing “Guido-wear,” a white late model Cadillac pulled into the parking slot immediately in front of the store. Only when another recently polished Cadillac parked across the street did the driver of the first car exit his vehicle. Well attired in tight-fitting threads and with oiled black hair, he ambled over to the other car, whereupon I saw the driver (wearing gold necklaces) lower his heavily tinted window. He and the first guy peered through their sunglasses at the entrance to Ralph’s and kept looking for what I thought was an inordinate time. They exchanged a few words before departing.
As the Cadillacs disappeared in opposite directions, one of Cliff’s regular jocular phrases echoed inside my imagination: “Eric, this ain’t Minnesota.”
With a couple of souvenirs from “Ralph’s of Italy,” we returned to the city. Beth and the boys took the subway up to Jenny and Garrison’s. I walked the distance, pondering as I went, the encounter with UB. I’d harbored no illusions about resolving “unfinished business” on the occasion of what had been billed as a social call. I’d simply wanted to re-establish direct communications as a step toward civil engagement. Given UB’s turning his back on me for the entire lunch and his odd departure from “Ralph’s,” I wasn’t sure that I’d succeeded in achieving my limited goal.
My journal entry for that day captured the continuing essence of the problem:
[. . .] The boys and I stayed up until past 1:00 a.m. talking mostly about New Jersey. Garrison listened very intently and offered a helpful insight: “It’s all about preserving Hamburg for Nina,” he said. That’s correct, but what about the stream of cash to Alex?! The only sure-fire way is a conservatorship over his assets.
Two days later I ventured back to Rutherford alone—not to call on UB but to confer with Cliff. We talked for an hour, reading off the same old page from “The World According to Bruce.” The upshot of our discussion was that we’d give UB until he turned 90. Then we’d lower the boom. That meant the Road Runner would be on the loose for only another 14 months. Or so we deluded ourselves.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
[1] On nearly every visit to Rutherford when Grandpa was alive, he’d deliver his monologue about the construction of Orient Way in 1926. At the time he was on the borough council and headed the building committee charged with oversight of design and construction of the main artery into Rutherford. He’d lobbied for concrete, arguing that it was far superior to alternative materials; that by spending more up front the borough would be saving money in the long run. Sixty years later, the roadway was still in great shape with only routine maintenance. After years of hearing Grandpa’s “Orient Way monologue,” I could never ride the bus along that concrete street in and out of Rutherford without thinking of Grandpa.
