Starting over, piece-by-piece, "brick-by-brick"

Beyond the tree-lined roads and horse farms, and far away from the traffic that routinely packed the Laurelton Circle, my father made his living, one day at a time.

It wasn't always easy getting out of bed at 5 a.m. every day, for 20 years, and facing a few hundred chatty kids who packed the small classrooms of the aging Herbertsville Elementary School.

Stan Davis was a teacher, then principal of a school that was so crowded, there wasn't enough room for an all-purpose room. Gym class and lunch were always held in the classrooms, right at the students' desks.

But my father got up every day, anyway, for 20 years, and he didn't really ever want to let go of the old-fashioned simplicity that long defined the Herbertsville section of Brick.

"Once in a while the horses would get loose and get on school grounds," he told me recently.

Eventually, in 1983, he would leave to be principal of Drum Point, and then retire 13 years later before settling in Ocean Grove and Manchester. Eventually, we would all leave, thinking our greener pastures were much farther away.

But we never stopped thinking of the trees, the roads, the horse stables and the old school as "home."

Now, as the Jersey Shore regional editor for Patch.com, and with the introduction of this Brick Township Patch site, I'm back. We're back. Now that we're back, I want to give light to a town that - in many places - never lost it's quaint, rural feel and its pleasant, peaceful views along the muddy banks of the Manasquan River.

I want to provide Brick news, Jersey Shore news, that was once provided and defined by people who stayed for years, and who never wanted to go away, either. Don Bennett, who worked for The Ocean County Observer for decades, and Pat Miller, a veteran of The Asbury Park Press, were among those people. Now they work for Patch.

Read the whole article here.