Tony Bennett was holding the microphone when I first heard Jerome Kern’s and Oscar Hammerstein II’s The Folks Who Live on the Hill. I next heard it sung by Miss Peggy Lee. I would take a pass if asked to choose between the two versions. To be fair, though, any professional singer would be hard pressed to bobble that ball.

When Mary Ellen, Alexandra, Christina and I moved to Ridgewood in Bergen County, New Jersey, nearly thirty years ago, we purchased a house situated on Upper Boulevard. While it is true you would eventually come to the top of a hill if you walked up the boulevard, we were humble folk who lived at the bottom. I would explain to family and friends we lived on Lower Upper Boulevard.

Before long, my growing consultancy and a bull market enabled us to climb the hill to purchase a Center Hall Colonial in what is described as the Heights Section. Although our view was blocked by a row of neighboring houses, a valley stretched beneath us. Like the Green Giant I could call “Ho, ho, ho” to the hard-working people toiling in the fields below. Would they have put down their hoes and sacks of seed to wave back? I like to think so.

It turns out all things, including our time in New Jersey, must end. As if to signal my acceptance of this painful fact, Mary Ellen and I left friends and the comforts attributable to habit and familiarity behind to move first to New York City and then Lloyd Harbor.

Because we now live on a hill overlooking the harbor, it is fitting to determine how close we have come to inhabiting Hammerstein’s wistful lyrics. 

The lyricist describes a newly married couple who build a “cottage that two can fill…”  “on a hilltop high.” They plan to add “a wing or two” when children come along.

We two didn’t build our cottage, which is actually a mid-century modern construction originally built for Bernard and Jeanne McSherry. There was no need to add a wing or two and we were light years beyond being a newly married couple.

While it is true the children of Darby and Joan, as they are named in the song, move out of the cottage, they don’t do so until the third stanza. Our children had moved beyond our daily supervision before we moved onto the hill.

I have endeavored to be many things during what I grudgingly accept as my one and only life. Have you watched Nick and Nora Charles cracking wise and mixing highballs in The Thin Man? How fun would that be?

Who wouldn’t want to address life’s challenges with Michael Corleone’s steely resolve, albeit with a little less gunplay?

And, of course, it is awfully pleasant to be one half of the “the folks who live on the hill.”

Although getting to where you want to go can be a bit of a climb, it is a journey worth taking.