East Stroudsburg

I was born and lived in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania until the age of five, when my immediate family moved to Chicago. A lot of relatives still live in the area, a town separated from Stroudsburg by Broadhead's Creek. This rather wide waterway flooded during Hurricane Hazel back in the 50s, when my mother worked as a telephone operator, well before I was born. The twin towns had about 13,000 people or so last I checked, though the numbers have probably swollen in recent years because of their convenient location as summer retreats for people working in New York City. In fact, my father used to take a train into Manhattan back in the 50s and maybe early 60s. There was even a state college there, now East Stroudsburg University. My family used to visit quite a lot after we moved, before many of us continued dispersing around the USA, got jobs, got married, that kind of thing. I'll visit briefly sometime next month.

As I mentioned in the last post, my uncle Bob died; and so a lot of people are gathering for a memorial service. My sister Vickie reports that Bobby, Jr. did make it back from Iraq and will not have to return again to the Middle East. He'll have to continue service in the States a while longer, but he made it, something everybody is grateful about. Certainly I am.

Robert N. Stine, Sr. (7/3/1941-5/25/2006) always made me think of the spirit of Elvis, for some reason. He had that kind of energy and sense of fun, and often sported an Elvis-style haircut. It seemed exotic from my perspective as a kid that he was Catholic, that he and my Aunt Gail were always married, and that he worked night shifts at Hughes Printing. I never knew exactly what he did until I read the obit the other day that says he was a pressroom foreman for 33 years. We had to be very quiet if hanging out during the day so as not to disturb his sleep. I always thought that was cool, because it was unconventional. I also remember him and the rest of the extended family at the wedding of my Aunt Denise with Uncle John DeVivo, me sipping champagne or something like it after a gig as ring bearer.

Last time I saw Bob and Gail was after they'd moved back to East Stroudsburg from South Carolina; they came back down to North Carolina for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago -- which is also about the last time I've spent with a good-sized family bunch at any one time. Weird thing is, living in East Stroudsburg seems like a blink of an eye away in time. As my mother asked recently, are we moving through time or is time moving through us?

God go with you.