The Memories Still Linger

The year is moving along and the memories still linger.

As mentioned, a couple of columns ago, the wife and I drove to Florida from Lakewood and had a great winter in our West Palm Beach, one-bedroom, first-floor corner condo, about seven miles from President Trump's Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach huge estate, a pop fly from the Atlantic Ocean.

The return trip in our white Ford SUV took about 18 hours of driving and we divided it up in about nine hours over two days. The Mrs. likes driving and was behind the wheel for about 70 percent of the time. We stopped in South Carolina the first night and intended to make it back to Lakewood late the second night.

However, while driving through the Carolinas, tornado warnings straight up the I-95 route we were heading through caused us to check into a motel early in the afternoon and stay through the night. No big deal, just an extra motel night and we arrived on a Tuesday in Lakewood, still one week before our Pesach trip.

We planned to divide Pesach between a motel near Cleveland and the rest in Detroit. We arrived at the Bertram Motel in Aurora, Ohio, a seven-hour drive from Lakewood, for the Midwest Passover program supervised by Rabbi A. J. Kushner, a yeshiva rebbe in Cleveland and Shabbos rebbe of a shul in nearby Akron. It was the tenth year the Pesach program operated there and the first year that offered an extra day stay by checking in a day early.

The extra day worked out great for us as we had a nice afternoon snack after a quick check-in and a tasty supper with some nice couples from Chicago. Our big enough room with fridge was on the first floor and so was everything else we needed during our stay. A short walk down the hall to the main hall, then a left and we passed the shul with comfortable chairs and tables. Then came the roomy tea room, and several game rooms for the youngsters. Across from the game rooms were the dining halls where the food was tasty with large portions.

Having a minyan with a siyum for firstborn guys like me Wednesday morning, erev Pesach, with a terrific breakfast was a big selling point for me, but the thing my old legs appreciated the most was there wasn't a single step for me to negotiate as everything was on the first floor. The sedarim worked out better than I expected as most people opted for having their own table. Our round table could seat six but had two comfortable chairs for us, with plenty of tabletop room for a pile of matzos, another part for wine, juice, soda and water, and, of course, plenty of room for the Seder plate.

We became friendly with our table neighbors and invited them to bring their chairs to our table for Shabbos, and others had the same idea. There were no headline speakers or singers as other Pesach places have, but I was very satisfied with the several young men who came from Cleveland after Shabbos to sing while we had a tasty melaveh malka.

After five great nights and after davening and breakfast, we checked out Sunday morning and drove three hours to Detroit to spend the rest of Pesach with my son-in-law and grandchildren. I was happy to see the continued growth of the adjoining suburbs of Oak Park and Southfield, which make up most of the frum Orthodox communities.

We were back in Lakewood nine days later where I faced some important medical decisions that most men my age also face. I had surgery to see if they should proceed with another surgery. I don't have the test results yet, but I'll tell you about it next column along with my first meeting with John Sterling, the great radio voice of the Yankees.