AGEING

I have to admit it came as sort of a shock on my birthday that I was old enough to collect social security and that Danny’s Steakhouse, Seafood and Sushi Bar was 36 years old. When we think back over the years, time is reduced to seconds as our memories scan the years past. When you are 16 and waiting to get your drivers license a year is an eternity. After 50 a year goes by as quickly as the summer season we wait all year for. Our children grow up and are adults and suddenly the grandchildren are the ages they use to be.

Only yesterday I was sitting in the window of the Friendly Luncheonette on West Front Street looking at the gas station that was located on what is now the Memorial Park triangle. I could see the garden apartments next to the Molly Pitcher, a large Victorian house next to the Twin Gable apartments. Next to that was the four columns of the YMCA, the Salvation Army building, the Synagogue, Frank Marrascio’s barber shop and the Chappani’s food store. Most of that is gone now and replaced with high raise buildings with more to come.

Red Bank seems to be changing rapidly but actually it has taken many years at least from my view. When I was sitting in that window at age 11 the merchants in the downtown district were the rich guys. Red Bank was a booming town for them with no malls or large strip malls on route 35 to compete with. That changed over the years and Red Bank business district died for awhile. The town like our bodies needs to change and grow in order to stay healthy. You just need to be smart about it and not push too hard or too fast in any one direction. We did that over the past 12 years and we are about to change again. It is no longer competition but parking and high rents that are hurting today’s merchants.

The good news is that as our bodies feel aches and pains of growing older, mentally we grow stronger. If and when we stop developing mentally I guess it will be over and our kids will be next in line. When you think in retrospect years can become seconds, except for health issues growing older is kind of a great journey. It allows us to see the mistakes we made in the past and hopefully not repeat them. “Youth is wasted on the young” has some merit as we grow older but really it is all part of the journey until it is over. To this point I have really loved the journey and being part of this town.