Journal: August 1. Cemetery. Airplane Tickets. Thunder Storm. Flood.

Oh dear. The days are  flying by. To say nothing of the hours. The plan for today was to sort through the piles of papers and files pulled from corroding boxes, rescued from beneath squirrel nests and file them neatly away. Also plans to shave Sam's beard and cut his hair. Perhaps these tasks will be accomplished in the five hours remaining before midnight.


So far, we have gone in many other directions.  Sam is flying to Milwaukee tomorrow and then going on a canoe trip with Carrie, her father, and two younger brothers. The plan was to drive him very early in the morning to catch his 7:45 flight at La Guardia. At some point late last night he discovered that the plane was actually landing in Milwaukee at 7:45--leaving NY around 6am. We would have had to leave here around 3am--this might have been even beyond our loony capabilities. He spent many hours this morning in an ultimately successful quest to change his ticket to  noon. 

Finally, with the plane situation straightened out and my New York plans taking shape, we could proceed with the afternoon at hand.

We had been planning a quick trip to buy provisions for dinner--spinach to go with the ricotta cheese in the fridge for    for a quick pasta--and were looking forward to a leisurely perusal of the Sunday Times.  I had also promised Sam a drive to the cemetery.

My grandfather, both my parents and my Aunt Frieda are all buried in the Jewish section of the Hardyston cemetery, about six miles from the house.  This would be his first visit to the resting place of his ancestors.

Rain had been forecast, and the sky was growing dark, so we decided to postpone paper and pasta and go directly to the cemetery.

This hilltop in Hardyston is not where I'd expect to find all these Glaubermans.  But there they were.  All the Jews of Newton--the Jewish families of my long ago childhood--were there as well.

The Friedmans, Pete and Claire accompanied by their two grandchildren who died of Tay-Sachs in the early sixties, the Seplows, who owned the liquor store, the Fogelsons of the bakery, the Churgins—he was a tailor—maybe she sewed as well, Sid Lubert, the television repair man.  They were all accounted for in the narrow Jewish section on the far side of the Hardyston cemetery.   

 

As we approached home, the rains began. Huge bolts of thunder, and torrents, sheets of rain so thick that even the bold, ever-tailgating Sussex County drivers had to pull over. So much rain, that we had to forego newspaper and grocery purchases--and carefully drive down the rushing river of a driveway.  The rain was so heavy that I sat in the car for twenty minutes rather than make the dash to the house.

This would have been the time to do the sorting and organizing I've been putting off all week, but the rain had managed to work its way into the den.  I have learned that one of the main issues in house construction is figuring out how to keep out water--the den--which my parents had built in the early fifties in a textbook case on how to make it easy for water to permeate floors, walls, etc. Luckily all the work we'd done in the den meant that nothing was on the floor--so the water didn't cause much additional damage. Of course, it did have to be mopped up.   There went the late afternoon.