Hoboken Resident Catches Up With The Old Gang, At The Diner

HOBOKEN, NJ — Hoboken native Dennis Sevano recently wrote an essay about his Hoboken buddies and their recent gathering.

Sevano is a former supervisor in the Hoboken public schools, a Hoboken High School graduate (class of '65), a teacher at St. Peter's and William Paterson University, and the founder of the Hoboken Sports Hall of Fame.

Here is his piece:

The Rejoining of Friends at the Elks and Malibu Diner

By Dennis Sevano

A reunion of old friends, whether they be from high school, college, or the old neighborhood, brings the usual positive feelings, but also tensions and anxieties (especially when birthday candles become a larger force unto themselves).

It makes everyone check their neck at the door, and revisit old questions from our shared youth: Does Vaseline really help make your face look better? (My mom always thought so.)

Putting aside the vanity trip, we search for more youthful days. In our memories are mind trips to Abbey Road with the British group, or younger days of drinking at Villa Romano, The Blue Point, or Tahen’s Tavern. Or a week’s trip during the summer season to the shore, Keansburg or Ideal Beach.

Our memories come along with us at this reunion of friends, and with them, a slight dread about looking weathered or speaking louder to mitigate one’s hearing loss.

It's fortunate when we have colleagues who summon the old guard in bad and good times to help us look backward and forward. We don’t feel so alone.

At the Elks Club

In Hoboken a number of weeks ago, my cousin Craig united a circle of friends who are mostly uptown buddies. Although the buds have a difference in ages, they easily slip into the story telling of corner talk.

The McMullen Brothers brought their Irish wit and back stories to the Elks annual talk-a-thon. They told the tale of when a witness saw brother Dennis taking a huge round house punch in the face at the beloved Sewage Plant Flag Football League years ago, by one of his teammates after a short discussion about a missed blocking assignment.

Well, McMullen didn’t budge or blink which sent out a message to all of us. “Don’t mess with that family!”

Tommy Turner, old friend and Little League PAL championship baseball teammate, had his legendary run from the Young Dems Club on the corner of Madison and Sixth to his apartment on Eleventh and Hudson Streets across from Maxwell House. Hoboken High School had just won the Hudson County baseball championship, a prestigious title of which he was part, and the midnight run, made on a dare at warp speed, was better than winning the county baseball title.

The other back story was told by Tom Brennan about his buddy Gary and himself, and their legendary car trip to south of the border when they stopped to shoot pool in a town in Alabama. The locals were not too happy about losing rack after rack to an outside group, especially those wearing long black trench coats. The Mile Square guys felt the tension and squeezed themselves out through a large bathroom window, escaping in their beat-up Ford Torino to head out of town. They left the money behind but not their pool sticks.

The Marine and Malibu Diner

I was greeted by a former Marine (never an ex-one or an old one), someone I hadn’t seen in over 30 years. He just lost his Viet Nam brother who was buried at Arlington Cemetery weeks ago with honors.

The dialogue was easy without much hesitation or any awkward moments. He could feel my connection just like Old Hoboken can. He wore his Marine shirt just as I hoped he would.

The McGovern family played an important part in our formative years of friendship. Neil was deployed to Viet Nam in the early part of the decade while his brother Barney was sent in the late '60s when most of the casualties occurred. We rambled on about Neil’s mother and her work at Lipton Tea during the crazy shift hours and about the neighborhood locals who worked at U.S. Testing and Tootsie Roll. The Marine enhanced our stories by sharing a clear and lucid memory of Our Lady of Grace Grammar School, St. Michaels High in Jersey City and of course Demarest. Later he married an airline stewardess, a Cal-Berkley graduate.

Yes, Neil was the George Clooney type of our neighborhood. There was so much to listen to, as Neil’s wife was a classmate of George Lucas of Star Wars fame, while I kept confusing Lucas with the former NBA Basketball player Jerry Lucas. By the end of our hopscotch talk tour we had our picture taken in the Malibu Diner. A patron shook Neil’s hand who was also a serviceman. Neil claimed to our new veteran friend that I had served as an astronaut in Florida during Nixon’s stay. But perhaps I misheard the humorous pun.

Formal and informal get-togethers become more frequent as a result of social media and helping to keep our aging hearts a tad happier. To those who make the lunge to shake our memory sticks, the good and the bad ones, we all should continue to stay gold.

“The great things about getting older is that you get a chance to tell the people in your life who matter what they mean to you.” - Mike Love, the Beach Boys and American Songwriter

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