Uncle Nunzio looks forward to spring, even more than most people. He owns a small house in Wildwood, N.J., one that holds a treasure of family memories. Each year when spring arrives, Uncle travels to the Shore with renewed hope. He feels as if the years have peeled away and he is once again a young man with his entire life ahead of him. Uncle knows the feeling is largely an illusion, that when he begins the chore of getting his home ready for the coming season, the aches and pains inherent in the body of an older man will be there. But today, driving his old Ford and feeling the mischievous breeze and the sun streaming through the open windows, he feels as if he is 25 and the world is his for the taking.
Uncle has kept the same ritual as he drives toward the Shore. KYW is on the radio. Uncle doesn’t listen 15 or 20 minutes a day as the station’s ads claim, KYW is on all the time. It is his link to the world and Uncle is proud of knowing what is happening in the news. He takes the back roads, not necessarily because it is better, but because that is the way he has always gone to the Shore.
Alone in the car, he makes frequent stops at roadside produce stands without worrying about annoying passengers. For Uncle Nunzi, the trip to the Shore is to be savored like a glass of good homemade wine. At each stand, he fondles the peppers, string beans and ears of corn, comparing prices carefully. He barters with the owners until the price is right. Uncle never makes small purchases. If the produce is good quality and the price is right, he buys by the bushel. He almost always buys too much. When Aunt Millie was alive, she used to scold him about making more work for her, but then the two would spend hours cleaning, cooking and preserving the produce in airtight Mason jars. Now he must do the job alone and it gets harder every year, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He finally arrives at the Shore. Bennett Avenue has changed a lot over the years since he and Aunt Millie first purchased their house. Most of his old friends are gone, either having died or given into age and young buyers eager to turn the gentle little community into a string of motels. Uncle has continued to resist the pressure to sell what has become a valuable property until the housing bubble recently burst. He not only owns his little home, but the lot next door, which he uses to park his car and on which he grows some of the best tomatoes in South Jersey. Young people in their 30s see dollar signs when they look at Uncle’s property, especially the empty lot. Uncle doesn’t value money the way he once did as a young man, when work was scarce and he needed to support a family. Now every time he thinks about selling, the memories stop him — memories of all the love and hard work he has put into the place. So he tells himself he will hang on for one more season and then that season has turned into another and another.
He takes a deep breath and inhales the fresh air he never gets on the tiny city street where he spends more than half of his time. The salt spray is no longer as evident as it once was, perhaps because of the huge condominiums that now dot the beach and block some of the ocean breeze that once blew down Bennett. It is not the way Uncle envisioned his future, alone and surrounded by strangers and big concrete monstrosities, but he has adjusted as well as he can for a man his age.
He will begin painting tomorrow. The fresh paint heralds the new season. He will do less fixing this year than last and less than the year before that, his only accommodation to old age. The new seeds will be planted carefully. The little seashore home will awaken like the first flower of spring. His younger neighbors will arrive and look at him like a curiosity out of another time and place. And of course, they will be right.
When night falls, Uncle will drink a glass of his wine and tuck his tired body into bed. Spring has arrived and Uncle Nunzi and his home on Bennett Avenue endure.
