Obituaries, Opinion

Bill Lang: A True Love Thy Neighbor Tale

“Hey! Where you going?!” I knew the voice. I knew it well. A Gladdis Kravitz Popeye, if you will. Gravelly, purposeful, with that guttural laugh, he’d yell to me from the porch as he, hearing my “beep, beep” call, would run outside to catch me in my disappearing act before I turned the corner.

After all, it was his neighborhood job. He took it seriously — and he relished the relentless taking care kinda ribbing he so generously doled out. Food was usually involved, too, if he could catch you to get you in for a burger, a sandwich or a Twizzler. The scoop was what he was after. He had that bait, too, but you couldn’t get away without a good grilling, burger aside, a lecture and a heaping helping of teasing. Always the scoop — on what I was up to and how my dad would feel about it all. It was a few million steps beyond nosy neighbor. He had to know. It was part of our neighborhood family pact.

So, the escape plan was always afoot for me. It was only right. It was what I did with my own dad. Evade. What’s good for one dad is good for the other …

Beep! Beep! “I’ll be right back!” I’d yell and wave as I flipped the blinker … just in time for him to get a “SURE you will!” in.

Behind the “SURE you will!” was my forever Fair Haven neighbor, family friend and surrogate dad Bill Lang. It was his way. I guess “I’ll be right back!” was my way of never saying “goodbye” when I knew one day it would come. That day has arrived. Now I know that I hadn’t gone back nearly as much as I should have, natural dad evasion aside. We often don’t. What he may not have realized, though, is that I was always going back in my mind.

And going back … It all started with the beep.

It was a thing we did from the start of our own little tale of a life’s block party between two families. At this point, I can’t remember who came to Fair Haven first, us or the Langs. No mind. We were there together seemingly forever. And I really don’t know when, exactly, or how it started, but we had our own little tradition. We’d beep and wave whenever we’d pass one another’s homes. I guess it was our way of letting each other know that we were always looking out for one another, saying with that beep, “I’m here. Always here.” A kind of commitment to never saying goodbye.

It didn’t matter when, if there was a drive-by, there was a beep — or three. We neighbors were family from the start. That’s just how it was. A passel of three brothers and a sister, another mom and dad for my sister and me. And vice versa. Best friends for my mom and dad and a few more kids to boot.

We kids walked to school together. Sometimes there was even book carrying involved. We all camped together. We got stuck in a rainy campground together, hostages of a jammed tent zipper and a coffee can commode. We blew up punch balls at the firehouse for the fair together. We sucked up some helium from balloons together and talked like Donald Duck.

We drank Mr. Lang’s infamous fake alcohol-laden punch on New Year’s Eve together and thought we were drunk kids. Yup. Figure that, authorities. We laughed like hyenas and crawled round on the floor together, enjoying our fake, illicit buzz. (The degenerate adults, Mr. Lang at the helm, kept the secret for their own kick. Stupid kids.) We conducted fire drills, instructions ironclad to run right to one another’s homes seeking shelter and a safe place where we’d always find one another.

Our dogs wandered down the street to visit one another, too. The call would come to send them home for dinner, just like the kids. Their dinner bell rang from the back door, a signal for both families that the dodge ball game in the street was over. If it was summer, the game reprised, or hide-and-seek ensued until the street lights lit up. We wandered in and out of one another’s houses with a little knock and a “Helloooo!” — no invitation needed. Time never changed that. Time.

I can’t remember a time that he wasn’t there. They weren’t there.

Personality differences didn’t matter when it came to sharing misadventures and milestones like family, growing apart and staying together — brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers. There’s a reason why they call it familiarity. A hot cup of comfort cocoa that sometimes scolded, never scalded. “Hey, neighbor” was our street and school hall greeting from our different cliques, knowing it meant brother or sister. Always.

And as we kids all got older and started to drive, the beeps multiplied. After all, it was a tradition. It started to look and sound like a parade from Hance down Parker. Every day. Between us kids and the parents, the only thing missing was a float or two. The reminder that each was there in that neighborhood niche for one another was a constant comfort — one we unwittingly took for granted. One we never imagined would end. How could we?

Then, one day, we were suddenly short a few beeps a day. My dad, Mr. Lang’s best buddy, died. I remember vividly the sadness in him over the loss. I remember him clutching the casket, a man you’d never see cry, but usually always poking fun, laughing, chiding and teasing, instead kneeling, tears streaming, head bowed, repeating, “My buddy, my buddy. Oh, God, my buddy.” Suddenly, the view down the street was different. It was raw, chilly. All too real. It would be us kids one day, mourning one another, our kids standing by. It showed the friend side of a dad, not dad side, of it all. They were much more than neighbors. Life was going on and there was a goodbye. The first. It just stuck.

A picture like that sticks in every crevice of a grieving brain. So does the kinship, the unbreakable neighborhood family tie. From that day in 1983, he had decided that he would take over in watching over us kids — my sister and me. My mom, too. And boy did he mean it — with all his nosy, nagging, teasing, taunting, loving heart.

We started to see him poised on the porch, hand over his brow, like a visor, scoping out the house for anything unusual or, perhaps, a stranger lurking. He wasn’t waiting for the beep anymore. Might miss something that came before it. And he’d yell down the street for us to come over for some coffee, a burger, a snack … He’d pop up on the porch, a welfare check shout-out disguised as a townie question about garbage or something inane. A sweet disguise. He was always at the grill or the stove cooking something up with plenty to spare that he’d push like a grandma to keep you nourished as if it cured all. And it sometimes did. And he loved a good story about which he could bug us relentlessly or chime in with a bad dad joke.

He also had mission: to drive us girls nuts, as only a good father would do.

So when I told him, at 23, that I was buying the red death trap VW Bug my father forbade me to buy, he, surprisingly, kept his trap shut about it with the condition that he come along to haggle with me a bit and inspect my awful choice. I let him think that his word was the last. And he even found an orange Bug for me when the red one bit it. What a ride. All of it.

We took it, pot holes, smooth roads, speeding, creeping like an old lady and all. The beep parade got a little louder for a while, as my mom started driving a stick shift and kept it in second for a good grind. She couldn’t beep and grid those gears at the same time.

The Langs’ beeps were still aplenty, though. And pretty soon there was a big wheel driver in my house. No beep. Just a sidewalk drag with that worn wheel, a fake horn shout of it — “beeeeep!” — and a kid giggle. Then my mom’s beeps and non-shifts ground to a halt with her death.

Now he was a serious grandpa to my boy, who worked for hours in school on the perfect Father’s Day card for him. After all, Mr. Lang was still looking out, doing the grandpa job his buddy never got to the chance to savor. He’d perch himself on the porch at school time, a big container of Twizzlers on his lap. Every morning, he’d catch my boy at the corner, run down off the porch with a handful of Twizzlers, tuck them in his backpack and say, “Here ya go, buddy! Don’t tell your mother!” Hehehehe.

Before long, my boy was continuing in the “stop in at the Langs’ and give the scoop” tradition. Then one day, as he hit prime teen years, another goodbye came too soon. The oldest Lang kid, our brother Jeff, died suddenly. The circle of life was spinning too fast. We were seeing what Mr. Lang saw with my dad. Now it was his boy.

It was time for us to try to take care of him. But he wouldn’t have it. He was still at the helm. Tears in his eyes when we stopped in, he had his usual way of pretending that he had it all taken care of. We let him think so. It was what kept him going.

Those beeps got more plentiful and louder and louder. And when Mr. and Mrs. Lang moved to Florida to retire, each trip home was accompanied by a healthy “Hey! Where you going?!” hounding from the porch.

As many times as I escaped, darting around the corner, I would punish him now and then by relenting with an especially long visit and some reciprocal ribbing. The last time I came through on that threat was a few Halloweens ago. We watched the parade from the porch, I hopped up and down to take pics as he clapped and shouted inappropriate advice to marchers.

Then I threatened him with taking over the candy dole and chatting up of little trick-or-treaters unaccustomed to the Lang way. Of course, he won. I had to let him.

It was just what I had to do. Let him hound. Let him joke. Let him watch over. Let him get that scoop. Let him think we’d all fail without him. The truth is we just may have.

Sometimes we don’t hear how strong a heart beats for the sake of love — especially love of a neighbor. We’re too ensnared in the bad, the bothersome, the trite of the ill-meaning.

Listen. Stop. You’ll hear it. Sometimes before you beep, wave and turn that corner, you just have to stop and stay. Stay in that one precious moment and millions more. Stay. You can always go back if you stay to embrace it in the first place. Keep the beep. The beep must stay, but you must stop, because the moments in those stops are all part of our neighborhood legacy. A tale of two families. The true neighborhood.

When I rode down my street for the last time a few years ago, I looked at the dark house, no one home, and I beeped, wishing I could go right back. Stay.

I whispered, to a phantom him this time, the usual, as I waved and came to a full stop, hesitating, stammering, “I’ll be right back …” Thanks to him, I’m always going back, knowing I have something so incredibly beautiful to go back to in my mind. Always.

Today, and every day, Mr. Lang, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! I’m back!

Thank you for looking out. Thank you for being there. Thank you for every little memory, naggish and nice. Thank you for showing me what a “Yes, in my back yard!” neighborhood is. I know I speak for my family, all three generations — Sally, Bill, Elaine, Carolyn and Cole — when I say we love you all — Bill, Bobbie, Jeff, Scott, Doug and Janet — and keep every minute with you carefully tucked away in our hearts.

Forever Fair Havenite and 59-year Fire Department member Bill Lang passed away months ago in 2020. His memorial will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday at Thompson Memorial Home, Red Bank. A funeral mass will be held at 10 a.m. the following morning, Saturday, at Church of the Nativity, Fair Haven. For more about Mr. Lang in his obituary, click here.