Perfect For Bocce

No Golf for Me.

Yea, you know I live on the fairway, with a piney buffer between me and the duffers, golf carts, and sliced white balls crashing through into the poison ivy and occasionally all the way onto the roof. I do not play golf. I used to putt on the board walk once or twice a decade, but for some time I have preferred to play bocce.

650 of us play team bocce, here in the retirement community near the Lakehurst gates of the joint base. Tonight, our division plays early, next week we play late. We have not played in three weeks because of excessive heat and then the holiday.

Today, the conditions are perfect for bocce. As the battle over the Delaney rages on up in Newark, we will roll the small white ball first and then try to get red or green ones closest to it. We have lights and electric score boards - these people take their bocce seriously. Legend has it before COVID there were fist fights over scoring. Apparently, COVID’s impact on the residents was more than just fatal for some.

They say there were several hundred more players in the league before they lost that COVID year. New Jersey got hit hard, especially in these elderly communities. I was lucky to be in California, yet, when COVID struck.

The situation up in Newark is a mess. Here, in this community, there is a dearth of empathy for the immigrant communities that most of them grew up in, up in north Jersey and the boroughs of New York City. Being from down here, I am in the minority not far from where I have lived and worked for the majority of my life. I go to play bocce, not to alter the Fox-crafted psyches of my teammates, who, after four years, know my politics. You can be sure of that.