Mr. Rockafeller

     Atlantic City means so many things to so many people. Ask anyone, they have a comment. When my parents honeymooned here in the late 50's it was a beautiful and charming beach community. In the late 70's the casinos came and changed the landscape, so to speak.  I moved here under odd circumstances in January 2002, post World Trade Center.  Being from outside of Boston, Massachusetts, the first thing that struck me was the divergence of culture here. So many languages and so many different ethnicities in so little space.  The casinos needed foreign labor it seemed to keep up their profit, but in doing so they created devastating poverty.  Homeless lined the streets along with the junkies and hookers and their pimps.  The beauty of the ocean and tranquility of the boardwalk was marred by the people who made their homes 'beneath the boards'.  This is a story of one very special person, who was truly a person, who resided beneath those boards.

    It was summer of 2002. My first summer here. It was sweltering heat and humidity with no air or even a gently sea breeze to catch your breath.  I remember sitting on a bench on the boardwalk trying to cool off in the heat of the day. I was watching the people, which is quite fun here. My eye caught an elderly man coming my way. He had someone trying to help him walk. I looked in his eyes and saw pain in them, then I looked down at his feet. He only had one shoe on and his other foot was swollen to grotesque proportions.  He hobbled along with his friend and I thought, as he passed, that poor man must be suffering. He looked like he had gangrene. A silent pray followed him, said by me, and I thought that it was a sad sight that was over.

   A few days passed and I finally found a park in Atlantic City. Amazingly it even had trees. I went there to cool off in the heat and there I found the man. He was sitting on the only bench available, so I asked him if I could join him. He looked up at me and smiled a very warm smile. I was struck by how handsome he was as I sat next to him. He was not crazy or dangerous at all, which is not always the case here.  As we talked I studied him. He looked very much like Sean Connery, really! So I jokingly told him so. This is when we became formally introduced.  He wasn't Sean Connery, even though he liked him as an actor, he was Mr. Rockerfeller.  I smiled and went along with the story. You see, he was a long lost brother to Nelson. The blacksheep of the family. I laughed and the more I laughed the more he told the story.  He was absolutely charming and funny and sweet.  He was also homeless, a Vietnam Vet, disowned by his real family, had gangrene, lived beneath the boards and was dying.

   All through the summer and into the fall we kept each others company. He would tell me that his family [Rockerfeller] was coming to get him soon, and that he wanted me to be his limo driver. We'd laugh and plan the big trip when the limo came. It never did, of course.  I lost him for a couple of days and worried that he had died, but then he was back with a hospital bracelet on his wrist. He told me how the ambulance personnel abducted him and carried him off to the hospital but he escaped. No, he wasn't nuts, despite blood poisoning.  He wanted to die free.  We talked about his foot and leg and why he wouldn't go to the VA hospital, and it all ended with being free and dying that way.

   It turned cold and the rain came. Our time of visits ended. He went beneath the boards and I went home. He died the way he chose-Free. He had the surf and sand beneath him as a bed. The company of his fellow renegades. He even had pet cats which live under the boards too. He seemed to have it all.  I know he stole my heart that summer and he will always live warmly in my memories. I never did know his real name, he was always Mr. Rockerfeller to me. I still think of him in a bittersweet way because in the sea of homeless here, he was one of a kind.  This article is a memorial to a man who probably never got one, and it is a very true story for those who wonder. Reality is far stranger than fiction, especially in Atlantic City.