Goodbyes Come In All Kinds And Sizes

One of the nicer things I’ll remember about last year is how I managed to reconnect with a former neighbor who lived two doors away when we were growing up in Elmhurst. Besides the two years I had on him, a difference between us was that Randy Balz had stayed in the neighborhood, continuing to reside in the family’s house on 55th Avenue even after he was the only one left.

Meanwhile, the first chance I'd had, I moved to my first bachelor's pad -- a basement apartment in another part of the borough -- in the early 1970s. I came back to Elmhurst a couple years later, staying with my parents until they made an even bigger move than mine by selling the house and retiring to the Poconos in Pennsylvania. Whenever I'd see Randy, it amounted to a brief exchange of hellos.

Thanks to my best friend, Michael Bellotti, whom I’ve known since we were boys in Elmhurst, I got the opportunity to meet Randy again. The three of us went to the Georgia Diner on Queens Boulevard to relive boyhood adventures such as the dirt bomb battles in the schoolyard of P.S. 102 (when it had one big enough to land an airplane) and the hunts for old comics at the Victory Thrift Shop.

Of course, we also recalled going to the wrestling matches at Sunnyside Garden. In particular, we recalled the time we had gone to see the tag team known as The Fabulous Kangaroos, two grapplers who were from Australia. Before their match, the Kangaroos would toss cardboard boomerangs from the ring into the crowd. That day, each of us -- including Randy’s late older brother, Roger -- had succeeded in snagging one of the souvenirs. Rather wistfully, I wondered aloud how I had become separated from mine, considering my penchant for holding onto things that have no great value besides what they mean to me.

During the course of the evening’s conversation, Michael and I enjoyed hearing what had happened over the years to some of our old neighborhood’s people and places. In his quiet and gentle way, Randy filled us in --- not as a snoop or a gossip, but as a kind of grassroots historian whose knowledge of the community was matched only by his affection for it.

Months passed, but we met again. Together, Michael and I drove from Long Island to Queens and upon our arrival at Randy’s house, he made a point of happily presenting some gifts that he wanted us to have. Michael received a small stack of old comic books -- just the sort that we would have been thrilled to find at the Victory Thrift Shop -- while I was handed an envelope that contained a boyhood treasure: a Fabulous Kangaroos boomerang.

At the end of another fine night of reminiscing at the diner, we talked about how we would do it again --- and soon. Meanwhile, I wished that I had something meaningful that I could give to Randy, but I could think of nothing.

Over the weeks that followed, I would encounter many more artifacts to recall my growing up in Elmhurst, as my sister Eileen and I took on the task of cleaning out our mother's apartment while she was hospitalized. Upon her eventual discharge, our mother would be entering a nursing home.

Going through her things proved to be a bittersweet experience, especially when it came to the boxes of old photographs. For my sister, who had always believed that hardly any snapshots were taken of her during childhood, the chore was enlightening. I got a kick just watching her as she found the various items of evidence to refute that belief.

Suddenly, there they were --- black-and-white images of her birthday parties and other special occasions. Of the latter, none was more memorable than the time Eileen had been photographed in her cowgirl outfit atop a pony when some entrepreneurial photographer visited our block on a summer day. She could not have been more pleased.

At one point, I came across a photo that I had forgotten about: a picture of Anna and Rudy Balz -- Randy's parents -- smiling for me as I photographed them as guests at the party Eileen and I had given at the Justice Inn to celebrate our parents' 25th wedding anniversary. It was a color photo, sharp and clear, of a happy, well-dressed couple and in that moment of discovery, I knew: I had my gift for Randy.

But I never got to see how he would have received it, because there would be no next time at the Georgia Diner. Instead, some more time passed, before I got the call from Michael, clearly upset. He advised that after several unsuccessful attempts to reach Randy, the voice he finally heard belonged to a cousin who was in the house to attend to some matter. Randy had died due to illness; the funeral service had taken place two days earlier.

He left us without saying goodbye, though perhaps in his own gentle way, that's exactly what Randy was up to when he gave away certain possessions to Michael and me instead of putting them up for auction on eBay.

But the way it turned out, there had been as much a chance of saying goodbye to him as there had been for any of us to bid farewell to the youth that now belonged to memory and momentos --- old photographs, comic books and cardboard boomerangs.