Mark's Stories 14 Juniper Avenue in Merrick, New York will remain forever in my memory as much more than a house. It was a home, an era, the center of a family. Until she moved two days ago from 14 Juniper, Aunt Sylvia was the only person I have known my entire life who had the same address. Place-wise, 14 Juniper has been the only constant I've known. My memories of 14 Juniper far transcend the amount of time I spent at the house. Memories of good times tend to do that, in some strange mutation of Parkinson's Law. My thoughts of 14 Juniper fall into two sometimes intersecting classifications: by season and by room. The Seasons In the spring and summer, there were the barbecues on the back patio. Aunt Sylvia gave me the "privilege" of cleaning the grill. There was the usual hamburger and hot dog fare, but the highlight was toasting, or, more accurately, burning, marshmallows over the glowing embers until they were black and crunchy on the outside and gooey white within. The warm weather also meant being given the further "privilege" of mowing the lawn. This was a special treat for a kid living in an apartment building in Brooklyn. As was being permitted to ride a bicycle around the clean, safe suburban neighborhood on those quiet Sundays—a marked contrast to the constant traffic of Flatbush. I carry a permanent souvenir of bicycling in Merrick on my left elbow. The quarter-sized scar continues to remind me to avoid sharp turns when riding over gravel. That incident, when I was about 11, ended with a trip to the local emergency room on a holiday weekend, most likely Memorial Day. It was a small price to pay for the many hours I spent riding through the tree-lined streets of that lovely town. Autumn brought leaf-raking. What might have been chores to other kids were delights to me. Aunt Sylvia presented them in such a way that I believed that I was doing something genuinely useful to help her out. I found the tasks both fun and satisfying. That such tasks kept me occupied for a few hours was likely the real benefit to the grownups, Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Harry, my parents, and sometimes Harold and Ethel Kramer, during those visits. The culmination of the raking was burning the leaves in wire containers the size of trash cans in that pre-Environmental Consciousness era. Volumes have no doubt been written on the primordial fascination with fire. For me, it was burning dead leaves. Autumn also meant Thanksgiving Dinner at 14 Juniper. The traffic from Brooklyn to Merrick was especially heavy on the Thanksgiving Day drives. Usually we took the Belt Parkway to the Southern State. The fall foliage along the Southern State—oranges, yellows, and reds in thousands of hues and tones—epitomized "Autumn" to me. The dinners were very traditional; my juvenile palate, however, usually evaluated the food by how many marshmallows were on the yams. Winter stands out less vividly. I do recall the cold, crisp nights after we said goodbye and got in the car for the drive back to Brooklyn. I would lay down in the back seat in that pre-seatbelt era and fall quite contentedly asleep. I also recall playing with the kid who lived next door, known as Corky, usually in the finished basement of his house. He was near my age, and we got along well. The story goes that he came by his nickname because of the way he pronounced his parent's favorite morning beverage. The Rooms I recall the kitchen, which was very modern in a '50s kind of way. The electric dishwasher was the first I had seen. I recall black, white, and pink. The small powder room next to the kitchen was the first I had seen without a window. Instead, there was a very loud exhaust fan. When turned on, it spooled up slowly and I imagined that it was a jet engine and that I was in an airplane. One entered the basement from stairs off the kitchen. The basement held Uncle Harry's darkroom and makeshift photo studio. A black-and-white 8"x10" portrait of my father and me, taken by Uncle Harry with his Rollecord, hangs in the "family gallery" of photos in the hallway of our home. It is one of the few, if not only, photos I have of my father and me, since it was my father who was always taking the pictures within our immediate family. The living room, traditionally furnished, was where Uncle Harry's chess set collection resided. Intricately carved figures of ivory, wood, and stone, each set evoking images of a different far-away time and place. I associate the dining room not only with Thanksgiving dinners, but as the place where Uncle Harry very patiently taught me how to play chess (my limited skill at that game today being solely the fault of the pupil, not the teacher) and helped me with my math homework. Upstairs, I recall Steve's bedroom, which had been converted into Uncle Harry's study after Steve was grown and out of the house. The walls were covered with grass cloth, and there were many shelves and books. It was in this room that I was given the task of sharpening the dozens of pencils with which Uncle Harry wrote his book, the pencil-sharpening being the indoor equivalent of the lawn-mowing and leaf-raking. I've saved my favorite room for last: the den. I have a vague, and possibly inaccurate, recollection of visiting the house just after the den was completed. Aunt Sylvia had been keeping my mother apprised by telephone as to the progress of the construction, and we looked forward to seeing the room addition. Unlike the traditional look of the rest of the house, this was an airy, modern room with a warm wood floor, Danish-Modern furniture, and plenty of large windows on all three exterior walls looking out to the back yard. This was where most of the living was done. Whether just sitting around and conversing, having informal meals at the round table, or listening to music on the stereo, the den was well-used and truly made the house. It was in that room that I first heard folksinger Alan Sherman, of "My Son the Folksinger" and "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadda" fame. I have no idea why I remember that, but I do, and I know I enjoyed it at the time. In about 1991, Elaine and I visited Aunt Sylvia at 14 Juniper. I had not been there for a number of years, and it was Elaine's first (and, sadly, only) visit. We spent our visit in the den, of course. Aunt Sylvia was so comfortable in that room. Both she and it had changed only slightly through the years, and their essences or spirits had seemingly become intertwined. I know that she will miss it greatly. The Place Suburbia has been bad-mouthed in recent decades, and often justifiably so. Yet Merrick seems unworthy of such criticism. It had warmth, charm and individuality, at least to this occasional visitor, unlike the mass-produced sameness of places like Levittown. Merrick—and 14 Juniper—were the expression of a generation's desire to embrace a new beginning after the Second World War, to live away from the crowding and concrete of the city in a detached, single-family residence in a quiet neighborhood, and to be able to feel the grass beneath one's bare feet in the summer on one's own property. There was hope and optimism on this new frontier of sorts, captured musically by Donald Fagen in his album “The Nightfly.” It was a good life, or at least that seemed to be the case to this kid from Brooklyn whose parents chose, for their own peculiar reasons, to remain in Brooklyn. 14 Juniper was thus a refuge for me. Not only was it where my loving Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Harry resided, but it was an escape from the sometimes oppressing urbanism of my own neighborhood. It offered not only the warmth of extended family, but a taste of a different way of life. As the Old Testament reminds us, "To everything there is a season." Aunt Sylvia's season at 14 Juniper lasted more than 50 years, and was a wonderful run, despite intervening sadness and loss. Those of us who knew and loved 14 Juniper can only cherish our memories and hope that it and its new owners will develop an equally meaningful, and enduring bond. I know that Aunt Sylvia sold it at a slight discount because she likes the buyers; they should have paid a premium, though, for all the good karma the house has absorbed over the last half-century.