Preface

I dislike “Prefaces,” more than I do artichoke hearts, and never read them. I think they are a useless waste of time and space. So I’ll keep mine short.

 Two years, one month and ten days after the end of World War Two,  a child was born. The sum of these accounts is who he became..

*          *          *

 I have a photograph of my mother and my father sitting on a wooden bench along the boardwalk at what is probably Union Beach, New Jersey. Before trendier beaches opened to the south, Manasquan and Ocean Beach were the jewels of the New Jersey shore. Soon, popular wisdom deemed that the further south you summered thrust you into a healthier, wealthier New Jersey caste.

But in this photo along the northernmost shore I smell he crisp Atlantic air and the salt of the sea beneath a cerulean sky. A breezy afternoon to judge from my mother’s windblown hair. It was any afternoon along the Jersey shore.

Mom has drawn her simple woolen coat over her shoulders, the sleeves knotted loosely around her neck. My father wears a sporty jacket, his shoulders broad and lapels as wide as wings. Wing-tipped shoes. His socks ringed with vertical stripes, each band a different shade, He leans forward, one arm wrapped around my mother’s shoulder, the opposite resting jauntily upon his left knee. Two bright smiles gleam in the old black and white photograph. My mother like Lauren Bacall, my Dad was the image of a young Frank Sinatra, joyful  in that in moment. It is the raccoon-ringed socks that make the photo iconic to me.

Back