Yesterday’s email brought news of a street name change and a flurry of messages back and forth that revived memories of our last place of residence, Montclair, New Jersey, a wonderfully diverse community with big old houses on tree-lined streets. It is close enough to the New York Metropolitan area to attract writers and artists of all kinds — and others famous in other fields but with appreciation for the privacy the community’s good manners would afford them. Such a person as the late baseball legend Yogi Berra, who lived up the street from us.

When I sent my daughters the link about the house next-door to our former home, I told them not to miss the additional item about the street the younger daughter would trudge up every day from school muttering, “I hate my parents, I hate my parents, “What’s this thing they have about living on hills?”

https://patch.com/new-jersey/montclair/when-you-get-to-the-fork-in-the-road-take-yogi-berra-way

She got it right away. “Oh, the fork in the road quote! ‘When you come to the fork in the road, take it.’ Because either fork will get you to Yogi Berra’s street. Neat.” (She also mentioned a typo, but in a family of writers and former journalists, that’s bound to be brought up.)

My late husband Ed had been a Yankees fan since childhood, even living in small Colorado towns, so the nicest thing I could do for him when I headed public relations at Montclair State College (now University), was to get him assigned to write an article on our neighbor for a Montclair State magazine. I did not go with Ed, but remained home imagining how thrilled he must have been to be seated in Yogi Berra’s study surrounded by Major League Baseball memorabilia, — two old men exchanging baseball trivia — while Ed tried to concentrate on the the notes he was taking.

Of course the article turned out well, but Yogi never could remember Ed’s name, always calling him “Kid.” “How you doing, Kid?” he’d say at the Yogi Berra Museum on campus or elsewhere. When Carmen Berra was still alive, she’d say, “Oh Yogi, you know Ed. He’s our neighbor.”

As for other forks in my meandering life, here’s another one in Southern California I wrote about. https://patnieder.com/2016/05/27/forking-over-some-facts/https://patnieder.com/2016/05/27/forking-over-some-facts/