Mendel Letters 103 — Century Village
In the late 1980s, right after you retired, you and Mother started spending time in Florida during the winter. In March 1990 you purchased an apartment at Century Village in Deerfield Beach, but Mother never got to live there. She was diagnosed with cancer in April and died in December. Mother’s death was hard for the whole extended family, but especially for you emotionally and practically. She was your eyes. You couldn’t drive and without her you were virtually trapped in your Co-op City apartment.
The next two winters you spent in Florida and in 1993 you decided to move there permanently. At the Century Village, buses took you to the community center and to the supermarket for shopping and you could see well enough to walk around safely and go to the local café for coffee or lunch.
You soon became involved in Century Village senior performing groups where you met female friends who were anxious to pair up with a good looking, youthful, nice guy. Well at least you were a nice guy. In fact you outlived three of them. Gloria once complained that she didn’t see what you saw in these women. But you really couldn’t see and you needed companionship. You told me you could never get used to eating alone. I don’t think you listened much when the women talked, but you liked the background noise, it was like having the radio always on.
You still traveled north to visit for family occasions and I wasn’t anxious to spend time in Florida. We soon figured out a compromise that worked for both of us. New York City schools were closed for a week in February and teenage Solomon would fly down to spend the week with you and your latest companion. You were glad to have Solomon so I only had to visit for a few days in the summer.
On one of your trips north you took the subway out to Brooklyn to see our new apartment in Park Slope. I told you how nice the neighborhood was, but you couldn’t clearly read the subway station signs and got off the train at a wrong stop in an industrial area that was very rundown. You found a working pay phone, a miracle in itself, called, and I drove down to rescue you. I think that was your last trip north, definitely your last subway ride. That afternoon I drove you back to the Co-op City apartment that you were preparing to sell and helped you pack up.
Once you asked me if I wanted the Century Village apartment when you were ready to “move on.” I must have been about sixty, which would have made you about ninety. You insisted I was old enough to live in a senior village and the alligators in the canals weren’t dangerous if you were careful. NO WAY. I’M NEVER LIVING IN FLORIDA.
Your son
Hard copies of these typed letters were discovered in an old camp trunk in the basement storage facility of one of the few buildings that remain standing in this Brooklyn neighborhood. The building is quite decrepit and is scheduled for demolition. The letters were found in November 2048 by a teenager who believes they were written by his great-grandfather. The letters are addressed to Mendel, the letter writer’s father, who appears to have been dead for at least six years when his son, whose name we are unsure of, started to write him. The son appears very agitated in some of the letters. With permission from the family, we are publishing them on the date they were written, only 28 years later.
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