In the Desert

 

By a string of well-tamed camels

I walk along slowly and silently as one of them

Crossing sand dunes after sand dunes

Under the extreme heat and dry sky

 

Sand under my feet begins to mark my steps, and counting

 

I and the group are one on the journey

Together surviving extreme adversity 

As one settled in a culture of harmony

Yet alone I am burdened with dreams and fantasies

 

I am puzzled

 

Don't know where I am heading

May be there is no answer to life 

Don't know what I am going for 

May be being in a group is the meaning of life

Don't know why I am questioning

May be having a sense of belonging needs to pay a price

Fated to thinking the same, doing the same

 

And feeling the same, then getting lost the same

 

I look up to the sky for an answer

Searching for a mirage mirroring my dreamy mind

To install all my hopes, aspirations and sentiments 

In that rainbow cloud

 

In this life!

S.P. Ma

Aug 2021

Encounters with Nature

 

My mother did not drive when I was young so we would go to Rockaway Beach on the Q53 bus line. That was decades ago. By coincidence I passed by that bus stop recently and the Q53 line is still there and still going back and forth to Rockaway Beach. It was a long ride but I had my Hi Q game with me and kept busy. The last stop on the bus is 118 street and Rockaway Beach.  

We would find a place to put our blanket very close to the water. Back then we didn’t use sunscreen, sunscreen wasn’t even invented yet. I got quite a few sunburns and an occasional sun poisoning.  

Mother would rent one umbrella and a couple of chairs and once settled I was taken away by the enormous sound of the powerful ocean.  Between filling my bucket with sand and finding seashells and knocking on dead sting ray shells I would find myself internally swinging with the crashing and ebbing flow of the ocean.  

The smell was gorgeous, the sand was hot and my little body was sticky. Bouncing in and out of the little waves did not give much relief.  

I can remember sitting on the blanket under the shade of that heavy fabric blue and red and green umbrella falling into this kind of meditation, a trance, I was one with the beach and the earth and the water and the sand and I was still and grounded and unaware of anyone else. Quite a feat for a child.  

I think that experience set my awareness to find the soothing sound of water anywhere I could find it.  

Hearing the rain has me stop what I am doing and focus on the tapping and pitter patter and drizzle and sometimes torrential downpours that clean the streets with flooding.  

I spend time at the East River where there are plenty of seats to sit on and watch the sometimes glassine nonmoving energy of the river. Sometimes the river burbles and travels over the jagged rocks below. At low tide the rocks are visible. If a storm is approaching the water is rough with white caps thrashing around. The tug boats and barges travel easily up and down the river. The water taxis ferry people from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn and even the Bronx.  

There is a stream near my daughter's house that I can only access by standing on a small bridge with tall gates, the sound of bubbling water over rocks and branches captures the movement it makes.  

I have had the habit of keeping the tap water running for the soothing sound that keeps the peace of running water in my unconscious awareness for a long time. I found out from an engineer I know that when the pipes in my apartment run brown it means there is a buildup of sediment and that I must run the water for hours to get the pipes clean again. What a joy to run the water for hours.  

Then there is the thunder of my tears as they fall as raindrops onto paper while I write.  Cleansing tears, like the cleansing waves of the ocean, like the cleansing East River, like the cleansing stream, like cleaning the dirty pipes with running tap water I am brought back to Mother Nature and her bringing balance and peace and power and cleansing and refreshment with water. 

Georgia

8.2021

An Important Part of Myself

 

 Momma always thought of herself as  being poor. If by being poor it meant she neverhad any jewelry, furs, much money, it is true she was poor. She came to America in 1910 at the age of 16, poor, remained poor and died poor. But, if we speak of riches as not referring to  material things but instead, that which is the spirit of the heart, one’s goodness, decency and the willingness to help others, then Momma was extremely wealthy. She lived for 93 years. I knew her for my entire life  and never once during that long period of time did I ever hear anybody say anything unkind about her. 

     Momma had five children between 1918 and 1928 of which I was youngest. Knowing Momma, I am sure if the 1929 depression had not occurred and lasting through the 1930s Momma would have had more children. Her children and her many grandchildren loved their Bobba Lena. A good example of the kind of person Momma was, can best be understood in the following.

     When she became older and stopped working in a factory hand sewing mens’ ties, she liked to go to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York for two weeks in the month of August, for mineral baths.  She stayed at a rooming house where she made her own bed and meals in its kitchen. One summer it turned out the rooming house had gone out of business and there was no other place available. My sister Katie found out there was another mineral bath area in Sharon Springs, New York, and located a small hotel that did have the baths  and did have a room available. When told, Momma resisted because she had never stayed at a hotel and would haves been uncomfortable to do so. When it appeared that if she would not go, it would mean she would be without the mineral baths, she decided to go.

     When Momma came home, Katie was helping her unpack and noticed where was a small gift wrapped package. “ Who is this present for ?” Katie asked. “ It is for me,” Momma said. “ Who gave it to you?” Katie asked. “ The chambermaid  in the hotel, “ Momma replied. Katie said “”Momma, when you go to a hotel, you are supposed to give the chambermaid a gift. Why  did she give  you a gift?”  “ Because I helped her make the beds,” Momma said. Momma was the least pretentious person I ever knew and the above makes it clear, she was the epitome of a classless society.

     Momma was always concerned whether upon her death, would she go to heaven, and if when she did, would she be given a chair.If there be a book of life, I am sure an entry has been made that upon her death, when she was delivered to heaven,she would  not only be given a chair, but like Sholem Aleichem’s  Bontche Schweig,, it would be a day of celebration and a day in which she  would be seated with honors.

     I  am fortunate I have Momma’s DNA  and that she is an important part of me? 

Ben Haber 

Music

 There are so many pieces of music that I love, classical, rock and roll, popular, ethnic, blues, instrumental, sweet love songs sung by lusty, beautiful women and jazz, jazz, and jazz.  

Depending on what mood I am in the music can be loud, soft, brassy, thick, rich, mellow, catchy jingles that get stuck in my head.  Music that is pretty, soothing, easy listening. Music that is colorful, blue as the sky, orange and molten lava, ambient as a gentle breeze. 

Here’s a list of some of my favorites because I can’t pick just one. 

I Love You More Today Than Yesterday 1969 Spiral Staircase. 

A Foggy Day 1954 Frank Sinatra. 

Today Will Be A Good Day 2017 ?? Diane Reeves. 

Let’s Go Crazy 1984 Prince. 

My Favorite Things 1961 John Coltrane. 

I could go on and on but these are my favorites because the run the gamut of my emotional sphere.  

 

Georgia

Aug 2021

Beethoven's 9th

 Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is distinguished from other symphonies in many admirable respects. It can take about 70 minutes to be heard and includes a chorus which together with the orchestra involves about 120 participants. It was completed by Beethoven in 1824 and performed in Vienna on May 7th of that year. Helen Keller was of course completely deaf, but a device was set up so that she could feel the music in her body. While by 1824 Beethoven had lost most of his hearing, he did have a very small segment still left in which to hear his symphony and like Hellen Keller I am sure he was able to feel it in his body.

I recall many years ago attending a Beethoven’s 9th Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Not only was the stage filled with the orchestra and chorus, but there were other musicians, I think trumpet players, on either sides of the hall itself. While sitting in the hall normally facing the orchestra is what an audience does, this day however was different. Because it was Beethoven’s 9th and musicians surrounding the audience, it felt as if I and the rest of the audience were in fact a part of the performance. We could hear it and feel it in our bodies.
Thank you Ludwig Beethoven.

Ben Haber

Chest of Memories

 

Memorabilia, objects of sentimental value, shards of our past, the remnants of diverse experiences that have been collected along the road of life, make up the contents of the chest, and are an endless infinitely varied collection of objects that are very personally meaningful to the individual.A simple rock may signify an accomplishment to the person such as  the rounded white oval piece of quartz that I am staring at now, which I picked up in front of the Montauk Light House on completion of my first bike ride there from Queens. Or the Tops Babe Ruth baseball card only saved from the garbage, and my mother’s wrath for not cleaning my room, because it had been given a neat place of prominence on my bureau. I uncover an art award received at high school graduation which received curious looks and raised eyebrows from my “artsy” fellow graduates, an award that was sacrilege to bestow on one of the “jocks”, those muscle bound Neanderthals whom had somehow been admitted to the school, probably slipping in through the back door. Fellow athletes were not too happy with this honor either, since it did not fit into their mold. All these objects thrown into a chest, drawer, shoe box or bag miscellaneously piled up like stratigraphic levels in an archaeological dig, piling up through time to one day be rediscovered and excavated meticulously while memories stream back into consciousness on an emotional, visual ride of remembrance. I think that my kindergarten paintings, or as I prefer to call them, “The Early Works,” may have been lost to the ages as I have not found them yet, possibly crumbling into dust, a symbol of the eventuality that I myself will succumb to one day. The bill of sale wherein my father signed away the family car to me as a gift when he could no longer drive it safely. Souvenirs of various family trips. A plastic Sinclair dinosaur from the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows Park. A buffalo statue with short chocolate brown fuzzy fur brought back from a business trip to Oklahoma, for me by my father.

Greeting Cards too numerous to mention, on every sort of occasion, milestones on the road of life are piled together in rubber bands now corroded and lacking elasticity, each with its own significance.  Photographs too numerous to mention, that somehow never made it into an album are stuffed in envelopes in the chest sticking together for support to overcome their feelings of rejection while stuck together due to physical proximity. Old stamps and coins stare blindly out of the chest , portrait eyes blinking, adjusting to the sudden light and coughing at the inhalation of fresh air. Keys whose purpose is long forgotten to open extinct locks sit waiting to serve, while miscellaneous objects whose original purpose or significance is long forgotten await inspection.

It is time to go now and the chest is carefully repacked and closed, till next time.

 

Jim

Aug 2021

My House, My Memorabilia

 

“What did you say?” I called out to my niece Alyssa just as she finished going on and on about the family tree while mopping her kitchen floor. “I said,” she answered, “You can get a print made of the house you lived in when you were a little girl. You just go to the website, type the address of the house and print out an eight by ten of your childhood home.”

I liked that I thought to myself. A print out of the house was much better than my niece digging up all our ancestors (almost literally) and marking them down on a family tree. I told Alyssa I didn’t know why she was so interested in our ancestors that were dead when she has so many relatives that are alive and only rarely, if at all, did she visit them!

I printed out an eight by ten of the house in Richmond Hill, Queens. It’s the only house I remember living in from the time I was about three to nine years old.  What a piece of memorabilia this picture turned out to be.  When I look at my childhood house, a flood of memories come back to me. Join me as I share a few memories that were evoked from just one picture

There it is! I see it in the picture, the door knocker. The house never came with a bell way back then. The thing was everyone in the family had to use this special knock on the front door. My father taught us the beats and we needed to learn them quickly. There was a reason for the special way of knocking and that reason was since the bill collectors didn’t know the special knock, the door wasn’t opened to them and they couldn’t demand payment of the gas or electric bill.

The blinds on the windows bring back such bittersweet memories just as the door knocker did. The blinds always stayed pulled all the way down and shut tight. I remember many times peeking outside from behind the blinds. We were very poor and no one was allowed to see in through our windows if they tried to be nosey about how we lived.

When I look at the picture and see all the windows in the house, I remember in my mind’s eye where each bedroom was upstairs and exactly how the living room, dining room and kitchen were set out on the first floor.

The shingles were very dark and very old looking. My feelings always got very mixed up when I look at this piece of house memorabilia.  I had challenges of learning a special knock to keep the bill collectors away to shutting the window blinds and keeping neighbors away.  Many of my memories taste sour in my mouth but yet I have memories that taste sugar sweet such as playing in front of that childhood home and having more friends to play with than one could ever imagine.

I made a mental note to tell Alyssa that she should print a copy of her childhood house, if she hadn’t done so already. I was certain it would become to her just as important a piece of memorabilia as the family tree that she had been digesting for years.

 

Ellen G.

Memorabilia

 I have saved many things over the years like bowls, photos, cooking utensils, books and even a turquoise, flowing georgette, mid leg length dress that belonged to my mother.  

My favorite item is the one I have saved for many years and it is hidden. Hidden so well I am not sure I can find it anymore.  

When my daughters were about 6 and 5 my 6-year-old decided to try being a beautician. She cut off lops and blops of my 5 year olds hair. My 5-year-old looked like a poorly groomed poodle. I kept the hair and wrapped it in paper and tissue for secure keeping.  

I couldn’t get angry it was too cute and my 6-year-old was so proud of herself.  

When I think about it now, so many years later, I feel the tenderness of the moment and the permanent memory etched in my bones.  

Georgia

Aug 2021

Everything Old is New Again

Stephen King wrote, “Sooner or later, everything old is new again.”  The same words are sung in the movie All That Jazz. The dictionary of idioms and proverbs says, “Everything old is new again, fashions and trends are repeated and revived.” The fashion aspect of that idiom jumps off the page for me. 

The dress had not seen the seen the light of day in 32 years. It hung under plastic in the back of my bedroom closet. It would never fit anymore so I never considered wearing it to any fancy special events like a wedding or bat mitzvah or bar mitzvah. While we attended these big parties, I knew with my weight gain, that beautiful dress would no longer fit. I bought that silk dress 32 years ago for my daughter’s wedding. A perfect, exquisite dress for the “mother of the bride.”

When Emily announced she and Josh were planning to get married, my thought balloon said, “There goes my free time during my academic sabbatical.” I had been teaching for many years and now I was going to enjoy my sabbatical classes in ceramics, chamber music and literature. Planning a wedding  would compete with my attendance and attention,and as it should have, it did. 

My best friend Jackie accompanied me shopping for the important dress for this important event. We started with our first and favorite Loehman’s in Queens and in Long island. Looking in the Front Room and the more expensive designer labels in the  Back Room brought no success. We thad no greater success in other “bargain stores” like Bolton’s and Philly’s. We graduated to the “expensive stores” such as Saks, 5th Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller. Looking in the mirror front view, back view, side view, everything I tried on was either too tight or too loose; too youthful or too awful. I wore a size 4 above the waist and a size 12 below. The problem was me, not the dresses. Finally, I found the perfect “mother of the bride” dress in Lord and Taylor. It was a pure silk, three piece, mid calf  dress. The color was dark cyan (not quite teal and not quite turquoise) with abstract splashes of fuchsia and black. It was just right!!

Fast forward 32 years. My grandson Matthew is getting married October 17 (wedding delayed since last year). I am now the mother of the mother of the groom. I have lost 10 pounds over the years and I am happy to find the dress in the back of my closet fits me and is still exquisite.

“No, no no!!!! You can’t possibly consider wearing the same dress to Matthew’s wedding. You are in every one of my wedding family photographs wearing that dress,” berated my daughter. “ Oh yes, the whole world is looking at their 32 year old photographs of your wedding. I doubt they will all be aware I am wearing that old dress,”I claimed. “How come so many brides choose to wear a bridal dress their great grandmother wore?” I asked. ” I too will be wearing a vintage dress,” I insisted.

To appease my daughter, I did go shopping for a new dress. I am happy to report, non were of the quality and beauty of my dress and with my daughter’s approval, I now plan to wear that exquisite 32 year old silk vintage dress. Everything old is new again.

Ethyl Haber

August 2021

A Voice from the Past

  My son Carl Haber is a physicist with a major research project underway in Cern Switzerland. He designs and has constructed the detectors  that detect a fallout from the smashing of atoms. One day while driving home from his laboratory in Berkeley, California , he was listening to the radio. The person speaking said here were many old recordings broken, scratched or otherwise in so bad a condition they could no longer be played on a conventional phonograph.

     Carl started to give thought to determine if there was some way in which to detect the sound from a recording, without the use of a conventional needle touching the surface of the recording. He pursued it to the point where he developed a way that could in fact extract the sound from a record without having a needle touching its surface. This became  extremely important to record archivists with the result that Carl’s equipment is now in operation in Berkeley, California, the Library of Congress, Andover, Massachusetts  and India. He has lectured the subject throughout the United States and abroad. As an indication of t he importance of this development, Cal was awarded d the MacArthur Fellowship Award.

     I enjoy telling a true story that flows from the above. A man was a bomber pilot in World War !! who flew many missions over Germany and survived. At the war’s end, he settled in Massachusetts, married and raised his family. He wrote several stories about his war time experiences for local newspapers and one of the radio stations invited him to discuss those experiences and he did so.

     After he passed away, one of his son’s wife gave birth to a son. The son of course never met his grandfather or heard him speak. He was able to read the newspaper articles, but the radio station interviews seemed to have disappeared. After his grandmother passed away, the young man was helping to remove the contents in her garage. In doing so, he picked up a large envelope and when opened, it contained two 78  records , each broken in half. They were his grandfather’s radio recordings.  Suffice it to say, they could not be played. At some point he came across Carl’s invention and found out there was a facility in Andover in operation.

He arranged to go there with the broken recordings and when inserted in the equipment, a voice  was heard. It was that of his grandfather. It was like a voice from the grave. It moves me when I think of this poignant story andI hope it appeals to all ll who hear it.

Ben Haber

Writing Prompt based on "The Wind in the Willows"

 

Assignment from July 31:  Are you someone who, like the Water Rat, enjoys nothing better than “messing about in boats”?  If so, write us a piece about the pleasures or problems you’ve experienced with them.

   Having always been the adventurous type, sometimes to my own detriment, I have often bitten off more than I could chew.  One such case, actually, I did it twice, was a circumnavigation of Manhattan island, 30 miles, 10 hours, in a kayak.  We shoved off one July evening at about 8:00 PM for a nighttime “circumnav.”  There were about 20 of us, six people in individual kayaks, sea kayaks, the kind you sit inside of, and seven tandem, 2 -seater, sit-on-top, very buoyant kayaks.  I was alone in a sit-on-top kayak, with a dry bag filled with an extra shirt, extra water, 2 sandwiches and a power bar or two.  There is a heavy-duty canvas seat clipped into the kayak to give the paddler an opposite force and to support the kayaker’s back and butt.  In order to paddle forward a kayaker needs the canvas seat to provide leverage to the paddle stroke.  Otherwise, the paddler would would move backwards and out of the sit-on-top kayak, and into the drink.

   Leaving the Long Island City Community Boathouse on Anable Basin in Hunter’s Point in Long Island City, we caught the East River’s flood tide north.  The East River is not a true river but a 16-mile tidal strait, affected by Atlantic Ocean tides that flood and ebb twice a day, every day.  The flood cycle is approximately 5 and ½ hours, with a half hour of slack tide, and then 5 and ½ hours of ebb tide, flowing south back into New York Harbor.  Let it be known that it is nearly impossible to paddle a kayak against the full flood or ebb tide.  I recommend that one go down to the river’s edge and watch the boats and ships tryst with the tide.  Ships sailing and motoring with the tide whisk by rather quickly whereas boats powering against the full tide are laboring and wasting fuel.  The ship captain would be wise to time his or her trip up or down river with the assistance of the appropriate tide.

   The LICCB was well-equipped and very safety conscious, as it should be.  Paddlers and rowers on the river are mere specks to the passing DEP tankers, fuel barges, tugboats, party boats, and privately-owned leisure craft.  We were ordered to stay together in a big pack, more visible to the passing ships and boats.  Our leaders would radio in to harbor patrol and to report our location to other vessels.  We paddled up the East Channel of the East River, to the east of Roosevelt Island, under the mighty Queensboro Bridge, past Hallett’s Cove in Astoria, and, after coordinating the plan, to cross the Hell Gate, a treacherous pinch-point of the East River.  The East River, beyond the Hell Gate flows north and east to beyond Throgs Neck in the Bronx to join the Long Island Sound.  Our course, however, was to cross the Hell Gate in to enter the 7.5-mile Harlem River.

   Now it was completely dark.  The night circumnav was happening.  As with any kayak trip, or foot hike, or long drive, one’s vigor is high at the start.  The flood tide took us calmly into the Harlem River where we traveled under the many bridges that connect upper Manhattan with the Borough of the Bronx.  The Triborough (now RFK) lift bridge, the Willis Avenue, Madison Avenue, 145^th Street, Macomb’s Dam, High Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton, 207^th Street, the Broadway, and, finally, the Henry Hudson bridges to get us through Spuyten Duyvil and into the mighty Hudson River.  The Hudson, formerly called North River, is a true river, starting 310 miles to the north in the Adirondack Mountains.  The Hudson is tidal, so it flows south, yet rises and falls vertically with the pulses of the ocean tides. The water moves quickly, about 6-7 knots.  When kayaking on the water, it is very hard to judge your speed unless you note certain landmarks on the shoreline or large structures visible form the water.  We exited the Harlem River and “hung a left” in the Hudson for the tidal ebb to pull us 13 miles down-river. 

   This entire trip was super invigorating and enthralling, as we had as one of our participants, a New York Times reporter named Robin Shuler.  She was in the front of a tandem kayak, not doing very much paddling but asking many questions to the participants, and asking me a number of questions, since I was one of two historians on the trek.  After about three hours of yapping, a trait that I have been “blessed” with, I had asked Robin if she needed any more info.  She said, quite emphatically, “No!”  I think I may have killed her with my exuberant historical tales and facts.    

   We paddled down-river, under the giant and majestic George Washington Bridge.  To give one some perspective, the height of the bridge from water level is 604 feet, the height of a 60-story building.  From tower to tower is 3,500 feet, over a half-mile.  All that finished in 1931.

  We paddled further, the East and Hudson rivers’ tides, currents, and eddies all at the ready to unseat you from your vessel.  Although the kayaker is being taken south by the river, provided by the tide and actual river’s southward flow, the paddler must be very alert to correct their forward motion from becoming turned sideways, or completely turned 180 degrees.  Going backwards in a kayak is very unsettling as one must be able to see an obstacle in order to avoid it.  one particular incident of “On-the-job-training” occurred near the 79^th Street Boat Basin on Manhattan’s west side.  About 200 yards ahead of me, with the dark river below and the dark sky above, I spied a large, round object coming at me.  We were directed to steer to the right, further into the river, to avoid the obstacle.  As we zipped by at 7 knots right by the half-submerged, four feet in diameter, orange ball, I had an important realization.  The Hudson River’s fast-moving tide was carrying us past the orange ball, which was stationary.  It was the outer boundary marker of the boat basin.  The large floating metal orange balls were anchored by cables to the river bed.  They were not moving, I was.  If I had been on a direct line with the “moving” orange ball, I would have struck it and caused myself serious injury.  What astonished me most was that in previous kayak trips, I had never experienced that situation.  One must remember, respect the sea.  It’ll swallow you whole, I can tell you.

   The loose pack of kayakers became quiet as the trek became 5,6,7 hour long.  We had stopped for 5 minutes at a dock on the Harlem River at Sherman Creek, and at the Downtown Boat Basin just north of Battery Park City and Stuyvesant High School.  At that stop, a peculiar thing happened.  As the paddlers, now on a wooden dock were stretching their legs and bodies, using the facilities, and eating something, we knew that the final three hours would be the toughest.  Heck, I was dead already and, I am glad to say, there were others far more dead than I was.  A U.S. Army term I had learned was to “Charlie Mike,” continue mission.  A young couple on the trip, sharing a kayak, were having a serious spat.  I could hear the woman saying, “How much further?  I can’t do this anymore.”  When her and her “boyfriend” heard three more hours, she got super mad and left the group, and her now poorly motivated beau to paddle alone.  The woman left and walked toward the nearest subway station to go home, wherever that was.  She was so sick of kayaking that she elected to take her chances, alone, in downtown Manhattan at 3:00 AM.  Yikes!  A very experienced kayaker, Erik, elected to jump into the back of the lonely fellow’s kayak and to tow the empty kayak, for the next three hours.

   We shoved off from the Downtown boathouse, zipping past the former World Trade Center site (it was 2005), Battery Park City, and towards the Battery.  To our right was Ellis and Liberty islands, with the great statue and her lamp lighting the way to our good and free America.   

   South of the Battery is a spot called, “the Spider,” where the Hudson River, New York Harbor, Buttermilk Channel, and the East River all influence the water, which bounces off the sea walls and can, in many variables of water motion, can unseat one from their boat.  It would have been fun if we weren’t on the water for eight hours!  As we finally entered the East River for our trek northward, the leaders timed it perfectly for us to catch the new flood tide.  Thank God.  I was not into paddling at all yet when one paddles alone in their own kayak, one must drive on.  There was no stopping now.  Being it now a Sunday morning, zero dark thirty, we pressed on.  The group of 19 was now silent.  Everyone was solely focused on getting back to Anable Basin in our fair Long Island City.  As we paddled further, we passed under the majestic Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges.  It was so awesome kayaking under these great historic spans, yet my zeal for the moment had waned back in the Hudson River.  As we followed the flood around Corlear’s Hook in lower Manhattan, a strong turn in the river, there I saw it.  Standing alone, a few miles in the distance, in a Long Island City of long ago, was the tall, green Citibank building in Court Square.  A beacon in the night, the word “CITI” atop what was once the tallest building in Queens, and the tallest building between New York and Boston.  Every paddle stroke got us closer.  Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Newtown Creek.  Hunter’s Point, Queens.  I can actually see buildings in Queens!  Oh my God!  We paddled silently past the piers at Gantry Plaza State Park, the Pepsi Cola sign, and, dare I say it, Anable Basin.

   We also raced to see who could paddle to the dock first.  I, being not dead and a gentleman, stayed in my kayak as we assisted the beginners onto the dock, and then, it was my turn to exit the restrictive water craft.  I grabbed onto the dock and essentially flung myself from the kayak onto the dock, like a super fat walrus.  I was so, so happy to be on the wooden dock, terra firma.  We all pulled the boats onto the dock, up the boat ramp, and helped each other carry the kayaks back to the boathouse, one block away.  The group, slightly less silent, hosed down the canvas seats, paddles, and the personal floatation devices (PDFs).  Salt water can erode equipment.

   The leaders closed with two minutes of info and upcoming paddles, which nobody cared about.  I want to go home.  It was now 6:30 AM.  Ten hours on the freakin’ water.  My back is tight, my muscles want to atrophy, where do I get a taxi at this hour?  My 45-year-old frame was wracked with fatigue.  I just wanna go home.  Put a fork in me, I am done.

   The next week, I appeared in the New York Times article, quoted and photographed, and that was the greatest reward for all of my efforts.

 

Richard Melnick

Astoria, NY.  8-14-2021.