New Year’s Eve is here, and somehow I am flooded with memories of a special summer more than sixty years ago and a hundred miles north, in the hamlet of Parksville, Sullivan County, New York.

Why? My son and his wife, joined by two other couples — all dear friends — have a tradition: they rent a house upstate and unplug to escape the artificiality of New Year’s Eve in New York City. Over a long snowy weekend, the crew cooks extravagant meals, drinks copiously, and contentedly dreams of better days in front of a roaring fireplace.

Back in the day, we didn’t have to unplug, because those were simpler times and we were perpetually unplugged. But, technology now being what it is, this year, the six Millennials are up in Livingston Manor, one town north of Parksville on Route 17.

Route 17. It’s called the “Quickway” because it allowed tenement dwellers of mid-20th century city life (remember: NO A/C back then) to escape the stifling heat and humidity of the outer boroughs in “no time” — at least when compared with the slow as molasses Old Route 17. Once our dads downshifted so their old cars could groan up the steep Wurtsboro Hills, they knew it was a matter of time before the fresh air, blue skies, and cold mountain streams of Sullivan County towns to the north awaited.

My childhood summers in Sullivan County were long ago. The area has gone through hard times — failed local economies and the elusive dream of legalized gambling were gateways to a plague of drugs and despair, and hotel and store foreclosures. I’m told that, in recent years, property values in nearby Ulster and Greene Counties have soared. A rising tide floats all boats; no wonder there has been an uptick in Sullivan County vacation home sales by downstaters, Covidiots in search of fresh air, green fields, and pastoral settings.

But back to Parksville. I had a great-uncle who flew military planes in World War I. He survived, prospered in the rag trade, and made some money. He bought a house in Parksville, not far from where my “poor relations” family once stayed every summer, in various bungalow colonies in and around Liberty and Monticello, two towns to the south.

I was a car-crazy little Fordham Road street urchin, and so I fell hard for Uncle Jack’s Cadillac Sedan de Ville. Acres of chrome. Wide-ass white wall tires. Red leather seats. Air-con. Power windows. He let me sit in his snazzy car with the a/c on during hot summer days, while the grownups shmoozed.

Uncle Jack’s house was huge, with a wide, wrap-around porch that me and my older cousins, Dori and Betty, would run around endlessly, working up a powerful hot summer thirst that only my aunt Hilda’s homemade lemonade could quench. Dori and Betty were smart, cute, and “wild” (my parents’ adjective, not mine; the dour little kid that was me thought they personified Supergirl status).

One day, Dori and Betty had an idea: exploring in the woods on the other side of the road. Game on. We found a path and started walking, deep into the forest. We carefully negotiated streams, fallen logs, collapsed hunter cabins. In the canopy of trees, it got darker and darker. We found salamanders. Dori kicked at deer pellets. We laughed to think of our parents, back at the house, playing boring old pinochle, when we were having so much fun.

In time, we got hungry. And thirsty. We were far from home base, or so we thought, for distances are “farther” and time is “longer” when you’re a little kid. But we pressed on, our shoes now muddy and soaked from fording streams in the deep forest.

Then, in the distance, we heard the unmistakable sound of water over rocks. Fresh water!!!! We rounded a bend and stopped short at the sight of an old man, in a dirty white dress shirt, black slacks, cracked leather shoes, sitting on a kitchen chair by the bank of the stream. He wore a yarmulke and tzitzis, the latter being the knotted fringes worn by Israelites since antiquity.

By the chair was a clear water glass held by a rope. He nodded to us and motioned us to come forward. We looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Dori pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows and I knew what she meant: “Ah, what the hell?”

Dori and Betty moved towards the man and I followed. The guy held the glass by the rope, lowered it into a deep pool of water, and carefully pulled it up. He proffered it to Dori. Dori reached out and took the glass by her fingertips as if she was a princess reaching for a diamond-encrusted chalice.

She sipped the stream water and solemnly passed the glass to Betty. As Dori smiled, Betty sipped and she, too, smiled. She passed the glass to me.

The old man nodded as if to say, “go ahead, drink.” I noticed a powder-blue pouch of Bugler cigarette tobacco in his back pocket and I relaxed; my maternal grandpa chain-smoked Buglers, so I figured this guy was ok.

I held the glass and sipped.

Tears of joy came to my eyes. Friends, that was the freshest, coldest, sweetest water I have ever tasted in my life.

I passed the glass back to the old man. He spoke not one word to us. He just nodded and smiled, and sat back down on his kitchen chair.

“C’mon, let’s head back,” Dori said.

“Yeah, before they realize how long we’ve been gone,” Betty added.

We waved goodbye to the old man, who seemed lost in thought by the side of the stream. He looked up and waved back. We picked up the trail and ambled back to the big country house with the wrap-around porch. It seemed like hours but we finally made it by late afternoon. The July sun was still high in the sky when we caught a whiff of the intoxicating aroma of dinner fixings that came from Hilda’s huge country kitchen. We knew we were close to home and we picked up the pace, crossed the road and trudged up the rutted gravel driveway.

We were just unplugged kids in an unplugged world. Our parents didn’t ask where we were or what we did. They simply left us kids on our own, free-range. And we didn’t mention the old man and his water station. That would be our little secret, forever and for all-time.

That evening, our entire family ate heartily from dishes and flatware passed down from the Old Country, and us kids drank copiously from pitchers of freshly made lemonade. There was barley soup, a huge platter of roast chicken and big bowls of rice, with candy-sweet carrots from Hilda’s garden. Homemade blueberry pie with a lattice crust was for dessert. After dinner, us kids played tag, as fireflies flitted. The dads lit Garcia y Vegas, drank schnapps, and the moms smoked Old Golds and kibbitzed. Dori lit punks for us kids, with her dad’s chrome Zippo. Night fell, the moon was huge, and the air was cool.

I was staring at Jack’s Caddy and dreaming of driving someday, travelling great distances in a future far from the Bronx. “Look up,” my great-uncle suddenly said to me, with a tap on my shoulder. He pointed heavenward.

It was a shooting star. Me, Dori and Betty stared, mouths agape. And then the three of us hugged. It had been a long day, full of adventure, and we were pooped. We sensed that this moment was special.

Enrobed in our scent of little-kid sweat, we three wearily went inside, and were tucked in by our moms. Moonlight streamed through the shears, and we tumbled into sleep, to the sound of our elders laughing and clinking glasses. They had made it through the dangers of Europe, the Great Depression, the horrors of two World Wars. In time, they too came inside, out of the chilly mountain air, and sat in front of a roaring fireplace, contentedly dreaming of better days ahead.

Just like my son, his wife, and their friends did on New Year’s Eve.

Stay safe everyone….

It was a lifetime ago, or so it seems. I recently read this story in Brooklyn, and I offer it to you now, as a remembrance of what happened that fateful night at The Dakota, here in NYC. Real New Yorkers know, and will never forget. This story is included in my newest collection, “A Shoebox Full of Money” — available via www.martykleinman.com.

MARK LIPSHUTZ, DOMINANT HANDBALL STAR, DIES

By the time he was on his deathbed, Mark Lipshutz was a real pain in the ass.

“I hate Navy guys,” he wheezed that mild, shirtsleeves, December night.   I remember it like yesterday, the sixty-four degree high, freaky for a New York December, the year I turned twenty-nine. 

I came to Mr. L’s room with his dinner.  It was late, and I was about to finish my shift.  A small black lighter was next to a pack of Jacks, right there on his tray.  I just shook my head. 

“Man, I give up with you,” I said. 

He smiled, and then coughed until he was red in the face.  It sounded loose, phlegmy, like pieces of lung got loose and rattled around his chest.  He squinted his eyes in pain, but you couldn’t get him to stop for no money in the world.  The smoking, or the bitching. 

And about the Navy?  He knew damn well I was on the McKinley.  Right after New Year’s? In sixty-nine?  We made way for the Philippines.  Now, the McKinley being a flagship meant we carried a rear admiral.  But it was slow.  Took us eight days to get to Pearl.  And a lifetime to get to Da Nang, where right away we saw, off to starboard, the bloated body of one of our guys, a pilot, just floating there.  I was eighteen.  This shit was real.

But back to Mr. L.  That night, I moved his cigarettes and put his dinner down on the tray, and right away he gives me the stink eye.

“Get that shit outta here,” he grumbled.

“Mr. L,” I said, “that’s a perfectly good veggie burrito. You need to keep your strength up if you want to get back onto the courts come this spring.” 

Word around the hospital? Mr. L had been the greatest handball player in history.  Bear in mind, now, that back in high school, up in the Bronx back in the day, me and my friends didn’t play handball.  I was all about hoops, and baseball, first base.  I didn’t know nothing about the handball world.

What I do know, though, is that to win in this life, you got to have an edge.  Me? I could run and I could jump.  Made our third baseman look good, leaping high for his throws.  And hoops?  I played solid D and just smacked those shots away.

Now, with Mr. L?  I am told that back in the day, he was a quick little guy, maybe five-six, hundred and forty or so, and I believe it.  Hairy, though.  Even at the end.  Chest, back, legs, everywhere you looked.  Thick curly hair.  His ears looked like those crazy tufts of leaves and whatnot you see popping out of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  

But he was built.  I give him that.  Good muscle tone, even for an older guy.  Had those old school, black high-top Keds he’d wear to rehab, along with these baggy grey sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt, turned inside-out, sleeves cut off.   

However, the main thing? His edge?  He was ambidextrous, see, as good with his left hand as his right.  And he was sneaky with it, too.  He told me once, while we were drinking Hennessy in plastic water cups, how during a match he’d play with his opponent’s head.  First, he made it look like a lucky shot with his left hand, let the guy get some easy points, get on a roll.  Then he’d drop the hammer.  Killers from the left, killers from the right, cutters, spinners, jumpers, whips.

“I let ‘em get a few points,” he said.  “Then I just get rid of ‘em.”

That last month was rough.  Mr. L was in a lot of pain.  It spread all over. His doctors tried to do right by him, keep him comfortable, but it was everywhere.  Finally, they upped the dosage on his pain meds to the point where he was in and out.  One time, just before, you know, I came by to check on him.  It was late, I remember that much.  Right away, I saw that he was out.  But as soon as I tiptoed in, his droopy old eyes creaked open.  I never saw him look that way.  I mean, the dude looked twenty years older.  His whole face just sagged and his eyes…it was like the light behind his eyes went from a hundred- to forty watts.

“Gimme that lighter,” he said.

“Why don’t you stop?” I asked.

Nothing.  No response.

And then, he looked at me, with a sadness in his face I’d never seen before, but I’ve seen it in a dog, like when they’re done, and they kinda know it?  And one day they just skulk off into the woods, to die alone, in peace?

At the time, I’d been there at Roosevelt Hospital a couple of years and you hear the doctors talk.  The pulmonary guys, the orthopedists, the cardiologists, you get a sense of things, medical-wise, you know?  And I would hear the psychiatrists too.  And what the shrinks would say is, look at the patient – not where the patient is pointing. 

And here was a guy, man, who came up from nothing, I mean nothing, on the Brooklyn streets of Williamsburg during the Depression. He turned to handball like I took to hoops, because it was the cheapest sport to play.  All you needed was a ball.  Mr. L, he took his dad’s old winter gloves out of the closet, and turned them inside-out, those were his handball gloves, early on.  He went to Eastern District High, with guys like Red Auerbach, practiced hard, eventually won a national championship, went into the service, Marines, survived World War Two, barnstormed the country giving handball exhibitions and really made the sport popular during the fifties.  In his world, he was a rock star.

And then, life happened.  The bottle, two divorces, some run ins with the law, a gambling dispute with the wrong kind of guy.  Eventually, he moved to Brighton Beach, where he paid the rent hustling handball by the ocean, on the cracked courts of Asser Levy Park.

And now, on that particular night, way back in nineteen eighty, there was that look in his eyes.  Like I said, it was late when I came in with his dinner tray and he started in on the Navy again.

“C’mon, Mr. L.  The game’s almost over,” I said, fluffing up his pillows.  Monday Night Football was his thing. 

“The game?”

“Dolphins Patriots?”

He snorted.  “They both stink on ice.  Take the Patriots with the points.”

Down the hall, the nurses had the oldies station on, because I could hear that twangy Beatles song, “All My Loving.”

“God, I hate the fucken Beatles,” he said.  He reached for the clicker, turned on the game, and upped the volume.  Howard Cosell’s nasal drone drowned the song out.  Mr. L was right.  The game was a stinker.  This was way before, you know, the Patriots got on their roll.  He turned to me.

“Did I ever tell you I played Russian Roulette?” he asked, eyes on the game. It was late in the fourth quarter.

“Uh, no?”  I raised my eyebrows.  This was a new one.

“Well, I did,” he said.  “Twice.  In the service.  I retired, undefeated.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?”  I said, as Russ Francis caught a thirty-eight yard pass from Cavanaugh. Touchdown. The Patriots were up, thirteen to six.

The score seemed to pick Mr. L up, because, out of nowhere, he started to tell me another story about his life back in the day. 

“I tell you about the time I got arrested up in Monticello?”

I shook my head, “no.”

“It was the year I drove a Dugan’s Bakery truck upstate. Same year that song came out.” He scratched his head.  “I remember seein’ those mopes play it on Ed Sullivan.” 

There was a commotion down the hall, just then, a lot of screaming, crying.  Doctors were being paged to come to the ER.  There was a gunshot victim.  Strange, I remember, because Monday nights were usually quiet.

“They found me parked behind Davco, the sporting goods store there on Main Street,” Mr. L said.  “I was asleep, dead drunk, behind the wheel of the truck.”  

The Dolphins tied it up.  But the Patriots charged right back and got into field goal range, as time wound down in regulation.

“But I think what pissed them off most was that I peeled the tops offa all the chocolate cupcakes.”

“What did you do with them?”

He smiled a crooked smile. “I fucken ate them.  Whaddaya think I did with them?”

The seconds ticked off the game clock.  The Patriots’ John Smith took his practice kicks and trotted onto the field along with the rest of the field goal unit.

“Close the fucken door already,” Mr. L said.  “All that shrieking and crying out in the hallway is driving me nuts.”

As I closed the door, Cosell’s voice suddenly got very low.  “Remember, this is just a football game,” Cosell said.

“Oh what the fuck?” Mr. L shouted at the television.  “Just call the fucken game, will ya?”

            But Cosell continued.  “An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside his apartment building on the West Side of New York City…the most famous perhaps of all the Beatles…shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital. Dead on arrival…”

            I looked at Mr. L, and he looked back at me, like he wanted me to explain.

            “Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash,” Cosell said.

            “Indeed it is,” Frank Gifford said.

            Mr. L, one-time handball champion, a guy who made it out of the Brooklyn streets, survived war, survived life, got uncommonly quiet.

            “Some fucken world we live in,” he said, as a single tear rolled down his cheek.  “Some fucken world.”

            And just like that, Mr. L’s eyes closed, never to open again.  Smith’s kick was blocked.  Then the clock ran out and it was overtime at the Orange Bowl.