Patrick Egan's Blog, page 36
January 31, 2017
I Am…
It was the day before the inauguration.
I found a local gym that offered a month to month membership. No long-term contract. And, it was only$49 per month. Ok, there is no pool (I don’t like to swim anyway and ALL pools have water that, to me, is just above freezing. “Heated pools” …just a myth. And, I tend to get water in my ear which keeps me from hearing clearly and forces me to keep poking my forefinger in my ear to clear it out (it never works). And, there is no sauna in this gym, which is fine with me. My apartment is warm enough and I don’t really want to sit in a tiny room with a few older naked men.
I’m Irish, not Swedish.
So I worked out on a bike for about an hour. Got my heart rate to about 107 and I left sweat on the arm rests. I had Spotify on my iPhone and was listening to some modern “Americana” music.
Then I punched the “cool down” button. I had burned off several hundred calories which I was about to replace a block away at the Amsterdam Ale House.
I went upstairs, without a shower (remember the above reference to naked men) and pushed the door to Broadway. I was met by an enthusiastic woman and a guy with a camera. [To get to my gym, you have to enter the lobby of a small off-off Broadway theater. The gym is down stairs.]
The woman had a sheet of paper. She asked if I would just say ‘who I was’ and what I was ‘fighting for’. I misunderstood what she said and thought that I would have my picture taken. I felt that I looked like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future. I needed a haircut and felt tired and miserable.
A day later I walked into the theater lobby to go down to the gym. It was then that I saw the papers lining the walls. The papers I turned my back on. The sheets of paper that I had declined to write a phrase and a comment.
As I read the sheets, I felt ashamed I didn’t have my own on the lobby wall.
I left the gym that afternoon…not with sweat on my forehead …but with a tear on my cheek.
Read some of these!
January 26, 2017
The Man in the Crowd
[My photo: Not on the night of the party]
I was surprised that the Beacon Bar didn’t just close for night to provide the space for the private function. Only the bar itself was open to regular customers. The rest of the space was ‘reserved’ for a party…or whatever it was. And a party it surely was…except for one man.
No sign was needed to tell me that the such and such bank was opening an office in Mexico City or that Doris, in Accounts Receivable, was retiring. So, how did I know it was a large group of bankers? It was simple. They dressed like bankers. All the men were in dark suits and the women (alas, only a few) wore dark power suits. A generalization, I realize. But I have only a limited time to tell this story.
I arrived in time to secure two seats at the bar. I ordered a Chardonnay for my wife (who was still forty minutes from arriving) and a Greenpoint Pale Ale for myself. Then the rush of the crowd began. The front door opened so many times the wind blew my napkin down into the dark recesses of the floor among the purses, shopping bags and boots and umbrellas.
I looked around and the sea of black outerwear made me think I had crashed a convention of funeral directors. I kept my iPhone in front of me and checked it often…just to look like I had something to do. Finally, Mariam arrived and began telling me of her day at the office. Then we both fell quiet, trying to decide if we should order a second round before Happy Hour ended at six or go home and try to stream something on TV…it rarely works and most of the time we’re left to listen to WQXR and Mozart and Vivaldi and Beethoven. A better way to spend time as far as I’m concerned.
But we lingered.
It was when Mariam leaned down to get her handbag that I looked over her lowered shoulders and scanned the room. That was when I saw him. I stared at him for a few more seconds than necessary. I looked around the room and noticed that everyone was engaged in a conversation of some type…some in groups and more than a few couples. (Office flirting? Most likely).
I looked back at the man. He was alone, sipping a white wine. His eyes kept darting around the room, looking for a friend or anyone to talk to. No one was paying him any attention. At first I thought that he was not part of the party…but somehow, he fit in…with his black trench coat and graying mustache and conservative neck-tie.
Then, like an unexpected wave from the sea of memories, I thought of how I often found myself in similar situations. At school dances, faculty parties, childhood gatherings and adult reunions. I’ve never been very good at making small talk. I often just stood against the wall or at the end of a sofa and pretended I had something very important on my mind. The only important thing on my mind in those situations, was how lonely I felt.
I looked back at the man. Still he stood by himself. Still he kept looking around. Still he sipped his white wine. I felt an intense sorrow for the guy. Then I thought that perhaps he had just fired someone or that he was the office snitch and was distrusted and disliked by everyone else. But, I dismissed that negativity.
He was simply invisible to the others.
[My photo: not on the night of the party]
I mentioned the guy to Mariam who turned for a quick glance. She understood my thinking.
She turned to me: “Why don’t you make your way to the men’s room and stop and ask him what the party was all about?”
I made up my mind to do just that. I took a sip of my half-empty glass of Greenpoint Pale Ale and turned on my chair to begin my push through the crowds to get to the rest room and to take the opportunity to be the only person to speak to the lone man in such a crowded space. When I slid off my seat, I noticed he was gone.
My hesitation had made me miss out on making a complete stranger feel that someone noticed him. Something I wished had happened to me…all those years ago.
January 18, 2017
Remorse And A Frozen Bottle Of Poland Springs: My Dinner With Chuck
Perhaps some of you remember a rather obscure film from several decades ago called My Dinner with Andre. It was a really intense movie about two guys who have a conversation over dinner on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
A two-hour movie about two guys talking over dinner…’nap time’, you may think…but the film was brilliant (and nobody gets blown up or vaporized and there are no zombies).
What follows are a few recollections of My Dinner with Chuck:
~~~
I was sipping a Greenpoint IPA at the Beacon Bar on Broadway and 74th St. I looked at my iPhone…twenty minutes to the end of happy hour. I was waiting for my old friend, Chuck, from my home town, Owego, NY. I saw him last at our 50th class reunion in September of 2015. Before that, perhaps we crossed paths at a less significant reunion (although I believe all class reunions are significant life events)…I couldn’t remember. The bottom line is that I haven’t really had time to speak with my friend in fifty years!
He lives in one of the Carolinas now…as do many of my class mates who moved to the south and mid-south to escape the rigors of New York State winters. His son (who lives in New Jersey) had scored tickets to the biggest hit on Broadway right now...Hamilton.
It was a matinée and Chuck said he’d love to meet up with me while I was in the City. He had lived in the “hood” back in the 1970’s, so he knew the Beacon Theater and the adjacent bar.
I took another sip on the IPA. I looked into a mirror on the column in front of me. I see two guys walk in. Heavy set…like Mafia hit men. It was Chuck and his son.
We moved to a small table and chatted until my wife joined us a few minutes later. Chuck looked great for his age and his son looked a Hollywood actor…like a young Jude Law. Funny, but his son is a lawyer (Jude Law?? get it?).
Chuck’s son made a call and soon a female friend of his appeared. She was a dentist. I tried to show her my infected back molar but my wife stopped me from peeling my lip back too far.
The lawyer and the dentist went off and the three of us went to pick up a half-dozen slices of pizzas from a nearby joint. We went back to our apartment and had a dinner of pizza and beer. It wasn’t My Dinner with Andre, but we talked about so many things from so many years ago. We discussed one important detail: who was the prettiest girl in the class of “65…we decided it was…(do you think I’m an idiot to tell you?…that’s our secret). We never sang the Alma Mater but we recalled and exchanged memories that we had both forgotten…each in our own way. We laughed and had several hours and several really good slices of pizza.
Chuck kept saying how great it was to get together…I agreed.
His son called and said he was busy for the night. Luckily for Chuck, we had an extra bed in the downstairs room.
We stuffed two pillows and found a duvet. We sat at the top of a very scary spiral staircase and talked before I sent him down stairs for a good nights sleep.
I went into the fridge and found a bottle of frozen Poland Springs in the freezer. I figured it would thaw in about twenty minutes and Chuck would have nice sips of ice water before he fell asleep.
Later, I sat up in bed…I had given my fine old friend a block of ice…it wasn’t going to thaw for an hour. I felt guilty. I felt I let my friend down on one basic of hospitality…a drink of cool water. A few minutes later I put my head back on my pillow and hoped he get up on time and connect with his son and get back to New Jersey.
He did. He emailed a thank you note but didn’t mention the frozen bottle of water.
Will I ever do anything really right? I fell asleep think of the way he described how delicious the cantaloupes were back when we were in high school.
Memories…old friends…these are the things that drive me to sit and write this at 1:30 in the morning.
January 3, 2017
My First Two Weeks Back In New York City After Five Years Of Living In The Far North Country
[Say what you want…this comes with the apartment]
Okay, It’s maybe three or four weeks now since we’ve left the cold and hostile fields of the North Country for the Cold and hostile streets of the Big Apple.
So, you might ask, How are we doing?
[Across the street from out building. A line waiting for cookies.]
I’d say just fine. It isn’t last year like Florida…that’s for sure but it beats the forty or fifty times I’ve already shoveled the path to the garage and the way to the road back home at Rainbow Lake.
Am I sorry we’re spending the winter in slushy New York? Am I sorry we’re sub-letting a great apartment near Lincoln Center? No.
[The famous Ansonia Building…just steps away.]
Do I miss the beautiful snow falls and the freezing lakes? Not really. I just had an injection in my lower back which would have prevented me from skating on anything other than my front deck.
[The view across the street.]
Do I miss the shoveling? No. I’ve mastered that skill years ago. I don’t miss the two feet of snow…It’s my back remember?
I’m remembering all the great nights and days that Mariam and I had in the 20+ years of living on the Upper West Side. Yes, I miss the quiet snow falls of the North Country…but it’s not forever. We’ll be back when the Black Flies begin to surface and the Canadian geese have returned to Ontario.
There’s so much to do there.
There’s so much to do here.
I’m a conflicted guy.
December 16, 2016
The Winters Of My Life
“Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see.”
–Robert Service. The Cremation of Sam Magee
I live in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. I don’t live in the Yukon. But lately, I feel like the Yukon would be a bit more comfortable. Am I living in Lapland or Spitzbergen or Thule…in lovely Greenland?
Don’t get me wrong. Don’t misunderstand. Don’t think I’ve lost my spirit and my love for wintertime. I love snow. I used to be able to skate backwards on the Brick Pond when I was young. Remember the Brick Pond blog post? Of course you do. I have fond memories of the winters of my life. My childhood girlfriend and I built a fantastic snowman in my front yard on Front Street after an unusual April snowstorm. It was probably 1963. In four days it was a pile of melted snow…like Frosty. A birch tree grows in that place where the snowman stood and wasted away that April.
My brothers and I would play ‘Fox & Geese’ in our backyard on dark December evenings. We’d make paths in the 18″ of snow, making figure 8’s and sharp turns…and then the game began. It was a form of Tag, except you were expected to not just ‘tag’ someone…you would push them into the snow.
It was unbelievable fun.
And, we’d take our snowsuits off in the backroom and our faces were red and our clothes steamed from melting snow and sweat and our mother made hot chocolate and maybe popcorn while we changed clothes…into our flannel pajamas. No hot chocolate or popcorn has tasted as good as it did on those winter nights in the 1950’s.
But, time moves on and bodies get older and the joy of moving snow has become a challenge that I can hardly face these days. See the path to the garage? I’ve shoveled such a path for sixteen years…at least (this is a rough guess) 30 times a year. That makes an estimated 480 times I’ve pushed the shovel and threw the snow from the front porch to the garage door. (I’d feel comfortable rounding that number up to 600). Then came the carrying of the garbage and recycling bags. Then I would walk into the garage where the bins are and find myself holding onto something to prevent my slipping on the frozen surface of the floor (from the melting of the snow from the car).
My back hurts in places I didn’t know existed. I’ve learned all about the L3 and L4 that I will need surgery to correct my stenosis. I think I may have had enough of the North Country winters.
I always believed that people needed four distinct seasons to keep one’s brain alive and enjoy the difference in weather. In my hometown of Owego, NY, we had four seasons. None of them went on too long…some of them like autumn were too short. But, here in the Adirondacks there are five seasons. Sounds great, right? Well it comes down to this:
A Long Winter
Mud
Bugs
A Short Summer
A Brief Autumn
I’ve checked my indoor/outdoor thermometer on a March night and saw that it was -38 F. This was early in our years in the North Country.
“Mariam, let’s step outside and take a breath. The inside of your nares will feel like pin pricks.”
“No,” she said.
“But it’s bracing, invigorating and stimulating,” I said. “You never experienced this in Queens.” She stared at me for a moment probably wondering if I truly understood the word “NO”. She went back to the warm sofa and picked up her book.
Clearly she didn’t fully understand the vibrant and visceral pleasures of walking our loop road when it’s forty below zero. Sometimes I find her hard to understand. What was her problem with a bit of a chill in the air? It took me a year or two to fully get her point.
[We never got around to setting this clock back an hour. It’s really 11:20 on December 15 as I finish this blog. It’s expected to go down to -14 F in a few hours…but I can’t stay up that long. So take my word for it.]
I own more fleece than is legal. I own enough wool to keep all the Irish Aran Island knitters in their due pint of Guinness. I have seven pairs of gloves, none of which keeps my fingers from numbness.
So, without regret, we are relocating to New York City for about six months. This is not because of my whining, mind you. It’s a professional move on the part of my wife, Mariam.
This is a fantastic country here in the Adirondacks, but it’s a young person’s world.
The skiing is great on Whiteface this year, so I read. But when your age is on the wrong end of the 60’s, I’d rather let someone else move the snow.
The weather in the City can be bitter in the winter when the wind blows off the Hudson, but I won’t have to shovel a path to put my garbage out or to get the newspaper. All I have to worry about is the slush in the gutters that will be my challenge as I stroll up Broadway to Zabars for some Irish Cheddar and some salmon fillets.
And, if its way too awful to get out…I can always order take-out from a Chinese restaurant.
[Mariam and I in front of our new home in 2000. Who would have guessed?]
December 8, 2016
Coal For Christmas
[Artwork:Watercolor sketch by Paul Egan (Date unknown)]
Another year and another chance for me to share this holiday post…
I am a grandfather now, feeling every ache and sadness of my sixty-ninth year. The stories that my father told me about his father have taken on new meanings. I’m the old one now. I am the carrier of the family history. When a recollection of a family event comes to mind, be it a birthday party, a funeral, a wedding or a birth, I get my journal and I write with haste, in case I might forget something or get a name wrong or a date incorrect. Or, forget the event entirely.
This is especially true when the snow falls and the Christmas tree decorations are brought down from wherever they live during the summer. There is a certain melancholy mood that comes with the wintertime holidays. The sentiment of A Christmas Carol comes to mind. It is a time to listen to the winter wind blow, put a log on the fire, pour a little more wine and to recall and celebrate the memory of those who have passed on.
It’s time for a Christmas story. It’s time to think again about my family and how they lived their lives so many decades ago.
I was raised in the post-war years. My parents were not saying anything original when they would tell me, or my brothers, that we had to be good…very good…or Santa would not leave us a brightly wrapped present, red-ribboned and as big a box as a boy could hold. No, Santa would not leave such a wondrous thing. But he wasn’t so vengeful to leave nothing in our stocking. No, he would leave a lump of coal…if you deserved nothing more.
My father grew up poor. Not the kind of poor where he would walk barefoot through ten inches of snow to attend school or go from house to house asking for bread. It was just the kind of poor that would keep his father only one step ahead of the rent collector. Dad would often make a joke about poor he was as a child.
“I was so poor that I would get roller skates for Christmas but I would have to wait until the next year to get the key,” he would say with a sly smile. It was a joke of course…wasn’t it?
His parents provided the best they could, but, by his own admission, he was raised in the poverty that was common in rural America in the 1920’s. My grandfather and my grandmother should be telling this story. Instead, it came to me from my own dad and it was usually told to his four sons around the time it came to bundle up and go out, find and cut a Christmas tree. I heard this story more than once when it was cold and snowy in the 1950’s. In the years when my father was a child, the winters were probably much colder and the snow ever deeper.
It was northeastern Pennsylvania. It was coal country and my grandfather was Irish. Two generations went down into the mines. Down they would go, every day before dawn, only to resurface again long after the sun had set. On his only day off, Sunday, he would sleep the sleep of bones that were weary beyond words.
Because of some misguided decision on his part, my grandfather was demoted from mine foreman to a more obscure job somewhere else at the pit. Later in life, he fell on even harder times and became depressed about his inability to keep his family, two boys and two girls, comfortable and warm. It all came crashing down, literally, when their simple farmhouse burned to the foundation. After seeing his family safely out, the only item my grandfather could salvage was a Hoover. My father could describe in minute detail how he stood next to his dad and watched him physically shrink, slump and then become quiet. He rarely broke the silence after that and died in a hospital while staring mutely at a wall.
But all this happened years after that special Christmas Eve that took place in my father’s boyhood.
It was in the early 1920’s. The four children were asleep in a remote farmhouse my grandparents rented. Sometime after mid-night, my father woke up to a silence that was unusual and worrisome. It was too quiet. There were no thoughts of Santa Claus in my father’s mind that night—the reality of their lives erased those kinds of dreams from his childhood hopes. There was no fireplace for Santa to slide down.
He pulled on a heavy shirt and slipped out of bed. The floor felt unusually cold against his socks. He crept down the stairs to the kitchen where he knew his parents would be sitting up, talking and keeping warm beside the coal stove. But the room was empty and the coal fire was burning low. The only light was from a single electric bulb, hanging from the ceiling on a thin chain. My father noticed the steam of his breath each time he exhaled. He called out.
“Mom? Dad?”
He heard nothing. He pushed his cold feet into cold shoes that were six sizes too large. Shuffling over to the door, he cracked it open to a numbing flow of frigid outside air. In the snow there were two sets of footprints leading down the steps and then behind the house. He draped a heavier coat over his shoulders and began to follow the prints. A pale moon helped light the way. The tracks led across a small pasture and through a gate. From there the trail went up a low hill and faded from his sight. He followed the trail. Looking down at the footprints he noticed that they were slowly being covered by the wind driving the snow into the impressions. A child’s fear swept over him. Were the young kids being abandoned? It was not an uncommon occurrence in the pre-Depression years of rural America.
In his young and innocent mind, he prayed that the hard times hadn’t become that hard. But deep within, he knew of his parents’ unconditional love and concern. He knew he and his brother and sisters were cherished and loved.
He caught his fears before they had a chance to surface. His parents were on a midnight walk, that’s all.
At the top of the hill, he saw a faint light from a lantern coming from a hole near the side of the next slope. He slowed his pace and went to the edge of the pit not knowing what he would see. He looked down.
He knew this pit from summertime games, but it was a place to be avoided in the winter. The walls were steep and it would be easy to slip in the snow and fall the dozen or so feet to an icy bottom. The children never went into that field after the hay was cut and the autumn leaves had fallen and the snow began to drift.
He dropped to his knees and peered over the edge.
At the bottom of the small hole were his parents, picking fist-sized lumps of coal from a seam that was exposed on the hillside. They had nearly filled a bucket with the chunks of black rock. They looked up, quite surprised, and saw my father standing a few feet above them. They looked back at each other with a sadness that was heart-breaking. They certainly didn’t want to be caught doing this in front of one of the kids, not on Christmas Eve. They stared at each other and then up at my dad.
“Boy,” my grandfather said, “The kitchen stove is empty. Come on down and help us get a few more lumps, will ya?”
My father was helped down and after only a few minutes his hands were black from the coal. The bucket was filled. They helped each other out of the pit and walked back to the house together. My father and his father carried the bucket between them.
In a very short time the coal stove was warming up again. My father sat up with his parents until they finished their coffee and the house was warmed a few degrees. Dad kissed his mother and father and went upstairs to bed. He fell asleep, he always would say, with a smile on his face.
Twenty some years after the midnight trip to the coal pit, my parents and my two older brothers moved to Owego, New York. I was born two years later, in 1947.
. . .
When I was a young boy, my father took me aside one Christmas Eve. I had not been a very good boy that day, and I was afraid. Neither of my parents, however, had mentioned the threat that would be used to punish a child if you were naughty and not nice.
My fear left me. Father’s voice was warm and full of understanding.
“Pat,” he said, “If anyone tells you that you will get a lump of coal in your stocking if you’re not a good boy. Tell them: ‘I hope so,’ then wish them a very Merry Christmas.”
[Artwork: Unfinished watercolor sketch by Paul Egan (Date unknown)]
November 21, 2016
Walking In A Winter Wonderland
Sure, I could be walking down this snowy, quiet and picturesque road. I could be thinking about the approaching holidays, the snow men, the fire in our downstairs living room wood burner…but I don’t imagine I’ll be making this walk. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I always have. But as I stand in the middle of this road to take the photo, I can feel my lower back aching from the shoveling I already did twice today. And now my left knee hurts. What’s that all about?
It’s Monday afternoon. On Saturday afternoon, I was on our roof in a tee-shirt and a leaf-blower and a pair of ear protectors (they look like high-end Bose earphones). I couldn’t hear a thing. The only way I knew the blower was ON was to watch the twigs, pine needles and wet leaves fly away…away to the back deck and the front porch. This would require another half-hour of leaf blowing. I stood on the roof like the Colossus of Rhodes…like Paul Bunyan. I looked down at my wife whose job it was to help keep the extension cords from kinking up. She was saying something to me. I couldn’t hear a thing. She could have been saying “the house is on fire and I just called 911” or she could be saying “I need to go to the bathroom”.
That was just this past Saturday. On Sunday, it began to snow. It’s 5:30 pm on Monday as I write this and it’s still snowing.
That’s a quick transition from late fall cleaning to mid-winter torture.
Take a look at the next two photos. The top one was taken an hour or so ago. The next one was taken a year ago almost to the day (give or take a week or so). Which photo shows a happy contented 69-year-old guy? Which one depicts a senior citizen who is cursing the weather gods and feeling his lower back going south?
Trust me. Both photos are of the same man.
No, I don’t think I’ll take a walk in a winter wonderland. Instead, I’ll pour a glass of Cabernet and watch the darkness descend on the view toward the lake. I’ll think of how quick things change. How you’re young one minute and lost in late middle age the next. How your friends are laughing and loving and talking and dancing one minute…and then their heart stops the next. I’m not being morose here…I’m still grieving my childhood buddy, Jimmy Merrill, who passed away last Thursday.
Old friends, old loves…and memories. I’m Irish so I tend to dwell on these things.
A little dose of melancholy falls into everyone’s lives. It’s not a bad thing. I just have to keep my eye on the future and the fact that there will be a day when the snow will melt and the crocus and the Lady Slippers will grow beneath the ferns and color will return to the world. It’s so monochromatic right now. But, that’s to be expected.
Another month must pass before the days begin to get longer.
November 19, 2016
A Farewell Letter To Jimmy
Hey, Jimmy…I can’t bring myself to call you James. For most of my life you’ve been Jimmy, so there it is. Mariam and I were in Burlington just this past weekend. As I wandered up and down Church Street I kept wondering where the restaurant was that we met for the first time in over 50 years. Mariam said she remembered which block it was on. I wondered how you were doing…
I was remembering the old days in Owego. Craig Phelps was probably the nearest neighbor (he lived across the street from me, remember?). But you were the next closest. Your house was just across the RR tracks and hard by the Brick Pond. Boy, did we have fun exploring the Pond in those days when only a handful of kids knew about it? You and I spent endless hours in our backyards playing “cowboys & indians” and army games with my brother and ‘Doc’ Phelps. That was quite a time. It was the time of our lives when few troubling things touched us.
Innocent children. Innocent young boys playing in fields near the Susquehanna. Fields of fair games and fair play. Fields of Youth.
We were rarely ever apart in our years at St. Patrick’s School. It was in OFA…high school…that we drifted apart. We hung in different circles of friends.
Then one day (was it 1964? 1963?) you brought over an album for me to listen to. We sat on our sofa at 420 Front Street and I heard the voice of Bob Dylan for the first time. I was a Dion fan. I didn’t get Bob at all. I said: “This guy can’t sing”. It was about a year later when I heard “Like a Rolling Stone” on a radio station when I was driving back from working at Carroll’s Hamburgers in Vestal.
I got it. You gave it to me.
Later, we sat on the steps of my house and you talked about this thing happening in Viet Nam. I was too wrapped up in my girlfriend and plans for college to fully understand…in 1965…what was happening.
You enlisted and you served with honor and I heard you got a medal of some kind for bravery.
Jimmy, you fell below the radar after high school and I did not hear anything about you until I was asked to try to locate you for the 50th Reunion in September of 2015. Things happened and I was able to find your phone number. I called and we met for lunch in Burlington. Such a great time we had…remember? We recalled the old days and caught up on how “not well” you were.
I wrote a blog about our lunch. It was quite popular among our Owego friends.
Then, this morning, I get some news on Facebook about you. News that made me weep for a time as I reflected on our history.
We’ll never explore the Brick Pond again, Jimmy. We’ll never play war games in our backyards. Ever again.
Wait, that’s not true…I’ll always remember the times we had and the growing up we did together. I’ll recall those childhood games again and again to keep your memory alive. I’ll walk around the Brick Pond again…in your honor.
RIP, my good, gentle and great old buddy. I’m gonna miss you…….You are the friend I’ve known the longest…in my life.
November 15, 2016
Here I Sit In Space #275 In The Rose Reading Room: Yet I Am Not Insecure
It was an afternoon in mid-October. The rain had fallen most of the morning so when I arrived at the wet slippery steps of the Main Branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Ave., the scattered metal tables were mostly empty and wet. I posted a photo of the wet tables on Instagram. It got a little more than a mild number of “likes”…I’ll settle for anything right now.
I made my way through security and up three floors to the newly reopened Rose Reading Room. It had been closed for about two years (I lost count) because the ceiling in one part had collapsed. In the years that the Rose Room was closed, I had to be content to write a chapter or a blog in a small but quiet auxiliary room on the second floor.
At least there, it was only a short walk to the Mens Room. I could leave my laptop and notebook at my seat, which was harder to get than tickets to a Miley Cyrus concert. [ Hey, I meant the seat at the reading room not the men’s room.]
But, here I was at last…in what is arguably the most famous reading room in America. It was stunning. It was fabulous and it was breathtaking. I looked at the ceiling mosaics and the endless rows of reference books. It didn’t take my breath the same way that the Trinity College Reading Room in Dublin had done. It was breathtaking because I was sitting in an oak chair that may have been the resting place of John Steinbeck’s bottom while he wrote The Grapes of Wrath…it was hard to tell.
I came in and saw the sign that said “NO PHOTOGRAPHS”. I searched for a table that had multiple AC outlets. My MacBook Pro was getting dangerously low on juice.
I found an ideal spot and quickly took a picture from my iPhone…before anyone would notice and come to drag me out and shame me in front of the scholars at work. It was so quiet, you couldn’t hear a paper-clip drop. I made a slight cough when my iPhone clicked. No one seemed to take notice. Safe now, I turned off my “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” ringtone and settled in.
Checking my desk number, I saw that I was sitting at #275. I plugged in my charger and took out my notebook, pretending to be studying something very serious. Instead, I was wondering who had spent hours at #275 and what they are writing?
It could have been Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Thomas Wolfe, Jay McInerney, Luke Sante or even Bob Dylan, who came here to read all he could find on the Civil War before writing “Beyond The Green Mountains”.
It’s safe to say that all the great American writers sat in one of these chairs at one time in their lives. After all, it’s a well-known truth that everyone has to live in New York City at least once in their life. Say what you want…it’s still the Cultural Capital of the World. But I couldn’t get my mind off the fact that I was now sitting in one of the oak chairs.
And, so I sat…wrapped my scarf around my neck like a French intellectual, and began writing. I didn’t write the Great American Novel but I wrote a blog called “The Blind Date”.
It got a nice reception on WordPress…but it didn’t get me the Nobel Prize.
That’s coming later.
November 5, 2016
My Personal War With The Xlerator
[Photo credit: Patrick Egan]
There ought to be a law…
What I am about to say might be familiar to some of my readers. These thoughts and descriptions appeared, in a slightly different form, in my book In The Middle of Somewhere. It was in the chapter that dealt with public bathrooms on a cross-country road trip in 2013.
But, recent experiences during my very recent stay in New York City has prompted me to take to the keys and renew my war with a certain hand dryer…The Xlerator.
It’s my opinion that this device (which I’m seeing in more and more restrooms) should be monitored by the FDA, OSHA and quite possibly NASA. In the name of “environmental awareness” i.e., “saving trees”, we are being subjected to a hand dryer that MUST exceed the regulations of decibels emitted by a small device. The dB’s are easily equal to that of a Boeing 747 as it prepares for takeoff…or a Who concert.
It’s a know fact that the police can give a citation to anyone violating the dB’s in a particular area with a “boom box” or an unmuffled car (or motorcycle). So, where is the EPA in the men’s room?
While in NYC last week, I happened to use the men’s room in the “Cellar”. This used to be a space for kitchen supplies and Godiva chocolates. Now it’s Mens Wear. More specifically, the underwear section of Mens Wear. When I left the bar in Rowland’s Restaurant to use the facility, I could hear the roar from as far away as Tommy Hilfiger. By the time I got to Calvin Klein, it was oppressive. When I took a left at Jockey, it was deafening. And I wasn’t even in the men’s room yet!
So, without getting too specific, I emptied my bladder and, feeling the germs of public surfaces (I held onto the escalator to the lower level), I washed my hands. The only dryer available was the dreaded Xlerator. I hit the ON button.
The roar and pitch was so great, I forgot my recent nightmares and concentrated on keeping my ears from bleeding. If that happened, it would present a whole new set of problems. I would need to go into a stall and get some toilet tissue to stem the blood flow from getting to the collar of my new shirt. (Besides, that would likely lead to minor hearing loss with damage to the stereocillia in my middle ear. I would then miss the subtle notes in a Metallica song).
Not to mention the explaining I would have to do to onlookers.
If you happen to come face to face with the Xlerator, I suggest cotton for the ears and finish drying your hands on your Guess jeans. Good luck if you’re wearing a family heirloom ring. God help you if you’re wearing a prosthetic finger. The force of the blast of hot air could launch a small dirigible, peel your finger nail polish past the nail itself and strip the paint off a ’57 Chevy.
If you’re wearing a wedding ring, take it off before taking a whiz…but don’t forget to put it back on when you get back to the bar. Otherwise, your motives will be suspect.
I only want clean hands, not an experience that might well leave me hairless on the backs of my skinless hands.
Beware Product Development is out there and working on a better and more powerful hand dryer.
God bless you, and good luck.
