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.

I want to give light to the community my father saw more than 50 years ago, when he chose Brick over schools up north, because there was opportunity for jobs and for raising kids safely that wasn't elsewhere.

"At the time (in 1958), there was a lot of tremendous growth. A lot of the houses were inexpensive," he said.

Yes, Brick will always be known for Routes 70 and 88, as well as Brick Boulevard and Chambers Bridge Road. It will always carry the weight of the suburban sprawl, the corked-up jughandles and cars that clog nearly every interesection, and nearly every highway heading south and west.

For 23 years, the Laurelton Circle has been gone. But the lines of traffic are, on occsasion, still there, occasionally piling back to Kmart, just as it did in the 1970s and 1980s. Drivers still pause with fear as they creep through the remodeled intersection, and get confused as they mix up their 70s with their 88s.

"But it is a lot better now," my father said. "You don't have that congestion you used to have. It used to be terrible there at 4 p.m."

There are still places that remind me of the Brick of my youth. The aging Herbertsville firehouse, where I first saw Santa Claus (and screamed), is still there, too, even though brown, box-like condominiums replaced much of the scenery that surrounded it.

"That firehouse was a meeting place - they used to have to have a lot of social activities there," my father said.

Herbertsville Elementary School is still there, too. Only now it has a remodeled facade, giving it the look of a new school, even if it still has the one-story-high classrooms where my father taught during the 1960s.

And they are still crowded.

A lot of development has come to Herbertsville in recent years. But a lot of what was there, 40 and 50 years ago, has remained. Anybody going there could see why, perhaps, we moved down there in the first place.

They could see a community where my father made his living, and nearby, raised a family who never really wanted to leave, even when our house in Point Pleasant was knocked down seven years ago.

They would get a sense that there is a place where people still live, peacefully and happily, one day at a time.