It was beautifully warm July morning, that Saturday in 1972. The air was clean, the humidity was low, and there was an ocean scent in the air that carried in from the east and blanketed Manhattan. It beckoned me to take a trip, and the destination was Jones Beach on Long Island. Within an hour, I was in my blue Super Beatle and on my way.

The traffic was light and a half hour later I was on the highway in Brooklyn, and soon passing JFK and then onto the Belt approaching Nassau County. That was when I saw the picket sign, a single board that pointed east, and on it was printed the word Elmont.

Elmont was where my father lived, and where I had spent a couple of years while I was in my late teens and early twenties. We were independent people, my father and I, and although only twenty-three miles separated our homes we had not seen or spoken to each other in just about two years. It was the way we were, going back many years to when I was entering my preteens and when my parents separated and eventually divorced. There was even a five year period when we did not see each other until I was seventeen. I was in my last half year of high school, and after the second time of seeing him it was then that I moved into his house in 1959. I spent the next four years living there, off and on, while pursuing my theatrical goals, until I entered the Army. When I was discharged in 1965, I went on to live in Manhattan and occasionally paid infrequent trips to my father’s home.

As I continued east, I decided that it was time that I pay him, my stepmother, Marion, my kid sister and baby brother a visit. But first, I wanted to spend an hour or two at the beach, and take in what the ocean and the shoreline had to offer.

Returning west on the Belt, I took the Mecham Avenue exit leading into Elmont, traveled about a mile on Mecham, and then took a left onto Rosser Avenue to where my father’s house was. For the three-quarters of a mile driving on Rosser flashbacks occurred. About five years earlier a favorite step-uncle, Angelo, had died, but I did not find out about it until some six months later. I later learned that he was visiting a friend in a hospital, and while in his friend’s room Angelo’s pack of cigarettes fell from his shirt pocket. Bending down to pick them up, he collapsed. He had a heart attack, and although he was in a hospital, the attack was massive enough to immediately take his life. Another such occurrence happened a year and half later when my stepmother’s mother passed away. There is an old saying, ‘when there are two there’s three’ which left me thinking. “Whose death am I going to hear about now,” were my final thoughts as I approached my father’s house.

As I turned left into my father’s driveway, I saw three people on the porch in front of me. It was my baby brother, Jason, my brother in-law, Johnny, and the next-door neighbor, Lillian. My sister, Alice, was at her own home some half of a mile away. All three stopped and looked in my direction, curious as to whom the visitor was.

Finally recognizing me, Johnny spoke up.

“Junior! How… how did you find out?” He rambled on a little longer before I stopped him.

“How did I find out what?” I asked.

“You mean… you mean you didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

“We… we buried mom yesterday.”

I stood stunned for a few moments before I embraced my brother, and then Johnny. I then asked where my father was.

“He’s inside, lying down. He’s exhausted from all this,” was Johnny’s reply.

As I entered the house, my father came out from the bedroom. He was surprised to see me, and as I embraced him, I expressed my sorrow. It was something that we haven’t done since I was a young child. If felt strange since neither of us were what you would call huggers, but his was a time where that did not matter.

We sat at the dining room table, and he related to me the events that lead to Marion’s death. Although he was never really fluid in telling of events, my father went into detail about what he experienced. A sense of pleading and remorse was behind his normally stoic approach in speaking; it was as though he wanted me to fully understand and not to criticize him for not being able to keep the Hooded Master from taking his partner of twenty-two years away from him.

“I took Marion and Jay with me on my way to work so that she could visit with Aunt Francie. She wanted to attend the Italian feast that was opening a few blocks away. While we were driving into Brooklyn, she says to me, ‘Al, I’m not gonna be with you much longer.’ I knew what she was saying, and I told her not to talk that way…that it was crazy.

Anyway, I dropped her off and went on to my shop in Greenpoint. About noontime, her brother Sonny calls and tells me to get my ass over to Aunt Francie’s. When I ask what happened, he bluntly tells me that Marion died. It made no sense to me, so I rush over, and when I get there the morgue is taking her body away. When I demanded answers, it was Aunt Francie who tells me. ‘Marion says to me that she’s not feeling well and felt tired. So, she takes my advice and lies down on the bed. About two hours later I try to wake her but I can’t, and…’”

My father could not finish, but he did not have to. He had already said enough to complete the picture, enough to affect our future relationship which brought us a bit closer together as father and son. From that time until his death ten years later, almost to the day, he and I never let more than two weeks go by without at least calling each other. Often, we would discuss Marion and her prescience of her pending death. ‘…I’m not gonna be with you much longer…” How did she know that a heart attack was waiting for her to sleep before taking its toll? Or, was just speculation on her part because she was not feeling well? Neither of us, my father and I, knew or would never know.

The experience haunted me for a while as I thought about how fate seemed to have played a very weird trick on me. After two years had past, I had to pick that particular day to visit my father. It was as though there was an angel sitting next to me as I drove out to Long Island, telling me that I must visit…that there was something that I had to know. Even as I write this, that day of almost fifty years past still is vivid in my mind. It visits me quite often, almost as if there was someone there reminding me. It will not fade from my mind until the end of my time.

As a footnote to this, that picket sign I saw with the name “Elmont” on it…well I never saw it again. I drove past its location many times, and there were countless of times that I tried to find it; all to no avail. It was almost as though someone had posted the sign for that single day, never to be seen again.