Several months before the Second Vatican Council adopted its landmark document, Nostra Aetate, my family moved about a half-mile across our New Jersey hometown. That minor distance spanned the dividing line between the attendance zones for two elementary schools, meaning that at age 10 I was abruptly separated from my childhood friends. Though I went to public school, and my atheist parents did not even belong to a synagogue, our family was culturally Jewish and so were most of those friends.
Amid my alien new surroundings on North Seventh Avenue, my mother was eager to call my attention to a family that had just moved into the house across the street. In the way mothers know such things, she knew the family had a son roughly my age. I made the acquaintance of that boy, Jimmy Lyons, over a game of wiffle ball, if memory serves. He soon introduced me to Tim Mulligan, a classmate of his at the local Catholic school. With Tim’s elder brother Danny as the fourth player, we began a years-long series of two-on-two football games, not quite tackle but a lot rougher than touch.
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