Great River

Chronology, Two

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Great River

We had a dog. Sheba. Briefly. She and my mother were terrified of each other. 

And a pool in the back on the edge of the woods where honeysuckle grew, and where we built a small fort out of scrap lumber repurposed from building sites down our road. Before the pool went up, my siblings and I had to pick the stones out of the dirt so they wouldn’t rip the liner. In summer we barbecued in the stone fireplace on the patio and swam with visiting cousins. When I smell honeysuckle, I remember that pool. I remember working on the fort with my friend Eddie who told me one night before heading home when the streetlights came on to watch out for lunatics. I said I didn’t know what a lunatic was, but he left. A few minutes later when I walked past the pool, he jumped out and screamed and scared me to death. We laughed and I called him crazy, and he said, “that’s a lunatic.” When I smell honeysuckle, I think of Ed.

We were protected by our parents’ forcefield, and secure in our innocence. But it wasn’t innocence, was it? Everyone was in tune then; the music did that. It kept us informed about what was going
on in the world; in Ohio, in Vietnam, in Watts; indeed, for what it’s worth, the music was a constant reminder that there was something happening somewhere, even if what it was wasn’t exactly clear. We knew all the words, and the words were ours to build with in the woods, or hike with along the Bay, through Timber Point Golf Course, and along the river to the reeds where an old duck blind was our morning refuge.

Geez, we were twelve. When you’re twelve everything is brand new and it’s all yours, and nothing, absolutely nothing isn’t feasible. That was how life was in Great River in the late sixties and early seventies. An idealistic village surrounded on three sides by an arboretum, a state park, and the Great South Bay. The fourth side was the main road, Montauk Highway, but it was so far removed from us we could wander the woods and streets for hours and never consider heading that way. Only at six pm when Walter Cronkite arrived did news like Vietnam sneak into our consciousness.
At home, Watergate remained a presence because my sister was a history major focusing on politics, and she constantly quizzed me about the players. “Who is John Mitchell?” “Who is G. Gordon Liddy?” This wasn’t history though; it was current events during my junior high years. I had no way of knowing that a half dozen years later I’d sit with Liddy alone in an office at college. When I hear about him now, though, I don’t think of our conversation. I think of our kitchen table in Great River and my sister.  

Mitchell was the Attorney General.

Dad grilled Italian sausage when family from the city or friends from the old neighborhood came over, like Joe and Rose Fontana. Or when cousins came. They didn’t come too often though, other than those who lived four miles up the road. No one back then would make the drive from Nassau County ALL. THE. WAY. OUT. to the South Shore of Suffolk County. Forget about it. Recently I looked it up. The distance from the inconceivably far reaches of my old neighborhood to the new house in Great River was a pilgrimage of twenty-two miles. Seriously, that’s how far it is now from my house here at Aerie to the first stop light. Back then it might as well have been in Kansas. We weren’t going back.

We never do go back though, do we?

Every Thanksgiving my aunt and grandmother would visit. My dad’s mom would play some piano, and Mom would be in the kitchen making everything you’d imagine she would make on Thanksgiving, while Dad and my brother watched football. Sometimes, especially in the early years in the house, my brother and I would toss the football, or tackle each other, or play whiffle ball. We built the first fort together; an outhouse looking thing. And we played Risk and some sports card/dice game about baseball I can’t remember anymore, but I can picture perfectly. We knew everything—absolutely everything—about baseball. We moved in the same year the Mets moved to first place, and everything in life was working. The Jets were winning; the Rangers and the Knicks were winning. Armstrong walked on the moon. And I learned about the music being played just upstate at the village of Woodstock.

We were one of the first homes on this road, and very quickly other twelve-year-old’s moved in. We’d walk to the deli and the post office. We’d walk to the docks at the Connetquot River. Everything was improving.

That’s just the way it seemed back then.

The way friends came and went, and I don’t remember—I mean I have no recollection at all—of ever being inside unless it rained, and even then. We simply stayed outside. Steve and Todd and I played baseball, and Eddie and I marked every trail of Heckscher State Park. For years we stayed outside, even in winter, bundled to the bay breeze. I loved how we were then. Early in the mornings in spring and fall I could lay in bad and hear the fog horns of the fishing vessels headed out toward Montauk or across to Fire Island.

But it was baseball that dominated my summers. The way we always played in Steve’s backyard, and the fence to the Campbell’s yard was a homer. The way I couldn’t hit to save my life in little league, but there on the property I slammed so many balls over that damn fence I felt like Ed Kranepool or Tommie Agee. The way we never tired and we’d quit mid-day and pick it up at twilight. The way even then I’d walk back up Church Road and through the side door to the kitchen where we always, always, had dinner together when Dad got home. The way Cathy would quiz me. The way Fred would talk about what interested him at school and about his trip to Mexico, or to the camp out past the Hamptons that one summer. 

When we prepared to move south, my friends all signed a baseball. Steve Delicati, Todd Long, Craig Long, Camille Villano, Lisa Villano, Frank and Richie and Tom and Paul. And Eddie, who never liked baseball.

When people ask where I’m from, I never know how to answer. New York? Virginia? Deltaville? When they ask where I grew up, though, I say Great River. Because we moved there when I had just
turned nine and we moved out; well, I suppose part of me never did. I can picture every square foot of that house, can name every road in the village, remember the trail that ran along the back of the town to the creek, and remember where the soft spot in the fence was at the arboretum that allowed Eddie and I to explore the old Bayard estate.

Sometimes when I think of that town I imagine if I were to drive the four hundred miles north to the end of the Southern State Parkway, and head down Timber Point Road, make a left on Leeside Drive, and another left onto Church Road, I’d see us all, young, laughing riding monkey-bar bicycles with banana seats, and chasing time like it was never going to end.  

That town is in my blood, and just a couple of years ago, Eddie and I made plans to return there to eat at the old Great River Inn, which had become an Italian Restaurant. That was the plan, anyway. Maybe someday I will. I’ll park outside the old house and walk, wonder what happened to the old folks, what happened to my old friends, and I’ll get a table in the back and raise a glass to my childhood, to growing up, to innocence and coming of age. And to Eddie’s memory.

We will always be twelve-years old, Eddie and me.

The Convergence of Hard Truths

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I walked along one of the country roads today thinking about how the stress slips away for awhile when I’m out there. It isn’t being “present” as seems to be the hip way to call “aware.” I’ve always been so in country roads throughout the world; I am rarely more in the moment than when I’m walking somewhere. But I’m also thinking about the times I’ve screwed up, the times I’ve made things work, the differences between the two which seems to be an ultrathin line as it turns out.

I’ve had a half dozen moments in the past five years I’d give anything to have back, to rethink how I approached it, how I’d do it differently. It is entirely possible—as was the case with me—to “do the right thing” in a situation yet completely fuck it up. That’s been me for a decade or so.

I’m quite tired of it. Indeed, I’ve absolutely had enough. I keep thinking of that traditional song, which I know because of James Taylor’s rendition: “If I had stopped to listen once or twice; if I had closed my mouth and opened my eyes. If I had cooled my head and warmed my heart. I’d not be on this road tonight.” Damn straight.

But here I am, nonetheless, confident I made the right decision at the time, confused as to how doing so could lead me to such places as I’ve found myself this half-decade. But I digress, which I’m apt to do from time to time. One paper once called what I do “Digressive Writing.” Okay, I like that, but it’s like trying to have a conversation with a radio, so I’ll get back to my point of the moment—the country road today.

When I was young there was a road which led from the main country road back to stables on the fringe of both a country club and a state park. My friend Eddie and I spent many days walking this road lined with tall pines. It ran behind the deli and the post office but branched off quickly so that nothing sat on either side of the road but woods. Eventually, stables, but until then the peace of nothingness, as if Eddie and I walked alone in the world, some Cormac McCarthy world but only in a good way instead of an everybody’s-probably-going-to-die way.

And we’d sing. Chapin, CCR. CSN. All the initialed ones. One time, and ever since then when I’m on a road like this, we both started singing “The Long and Winding Road,” at the same time. Instead of either of us stopping or both of us laughing, we kept singing, quietly, never looking at each other, never missing a word.

I needed that moment today and I found it right near my home, on another road which runs along the river, spotted by houses set back, but mostly road, trees, and quiet. No concerns about falling down or fucking up. No concerns about what to do next—it is next, there is no next, only a long string of both impossible and beautiful nows.

Just my feet on gravel. Some wind. A house wren, an osprey. No water as it was quite still today on the river. No neighbors, no cars, no dogs in the distance. Just my feet on the gravel or the grass and the light breeze.

And me:

Many times I’ve been alone
And many times I’ve cried
Anyway, you’ll never know
The many ways I’ve tried

I’m not sure what happened next. I was engulfed by all things that have gone wrong; I had a clarity of every path, every diversion, every digression. I stood for a long time and thought of Eddie, of the stables, of a road I used to walk in Pennsylvania and another in New England. There have always been country roads for me. I suppose even my brief time in Brooklyn after college I could consider President’s Street a country road for all of the time my mind was wandering.

When else is a person to think about things?

My brother pointed out to me that someone—Einstein, maybe?—said the definition of insanity is following the same course of action hoping to reach a different result. Geez—lock me up now. Guilty. You know why? No, me neither, and that’s the problem. Sometimes it takes the right convergence of circumstance to cut short a dangerous cycle.

Which brings me to the past week or so. This is my convergence; these are my circumstances: I was in Utah and hiked and laughed and remembered and hoped. I was in Utah and pushed myself harder than I have had to in a long time and found out I could. And the sun set across a field of salt, and that moment is forever; that moment was thirty-five years old and thirty-five years from now. So, I came home and continued to hike, albeit mercifully at sea level. And I let go of my mistakes, my bad decisions. Sure, I still have some bluffs to call, some baggage to burn, and I just hope to high heaven those around me have a little more patience while I find my way back. But I came back and hiked, and today I walked that road down past the house of the late Walter Cronkite, and all the way to the dock and the pier sticking into the Rappahannock River, and I walked to the end of the road lined with pines and let my feet dangle, let my past week just hang out there, let my soul just float out there, and knew that everything we go through, everything, even the depths of bad decisions, brings us back to this moment now, and I took a long breath, let it out, watched a boat head out to the bay, and quietly sang, Eddie’s voice up in the clouds somewhere,

The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Lead me to your door

Please: Take two minutes and seventeen seconds:

The Past is in It’s Grave

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Heckscher State Park, Great South Bay

I’m cleaning closets and donating clothes and other items I no longer need. Some are just old collectibles in boxes shoved beneath beds and in the attic. If I could fit junk in the crawl space under the house, I probably would. I have too much stuff. Soon, most of it will be gone, but it isn’t easy deciding what to keep. I can easily make a case for retaining every item. Sometimes it is comforting to pull out an old trinket and tell stories about what happened. I have an ashtray from a resort in Palm Springs from when I was fifteen, but I can’t mention it without my mother reminding me how I wandered alone for hours in rattlesnake country in the San Jacinto Mountains. I’m keeping that one. There are postcards and paperweights from family vacations and solo trips out west. Most of it is going. I can remember what happened without a cheap plastic prompt. And if I can’t remember then the item is a waste of space.

But last night I came to what I call the “Long Island Box.”

At almost fifteen years old we moved from my childhood home on the Island to Virginia—that was almost half a century ago; so far in my past I am the same number of years to 100 as I am to leaving the Island. And so much has happened since those days to make those first fourteen years little more than a title page; at best a brief introduction to the rest of my life. In fact, it seems that boy might easily be someone else save one particular item: the baseball my friends signed and gave me when I moved. On the rare days I pick it up it connects us across time and distance. I can look at the ball as proof I actually knew those people, and if I were to go back to Long Island, I’d almost expect to see them in their youth. Memories trick us into thinking of some places as special when, in fact, it is usually a particular time we relish. The truth is, when I hold the ball I don’t want to go back to New York; I want to go back to 1975.

When we were young we played baseball; we listened to music; we hiked the woods of Heckscher State Park; we skated across the Connetquot River and waded well into the Great South Bay. We hopped the fence of the Bayard Cutting Arboretum and camped out and kept secrets; we built forts and fought over stupid things. We came of age during the Vietnam War, and music was part of our blood. Now as if to symbolize all those days, I have the baseball. The names have not faded even while most of the faces have, though I certainly can conjure up the idea of who they all were. Over the years I’ve been back to New York, but never saw those friends again. Still, when I return I say I’m going “back” to New York, not “up,” as if New York will always be a time more than a place.

When those friends gave me the ball that last day, I wanted to stay in that town and finish growing up with Steve and Todd, Eddie and Paul, Janet and Lisa and Essie and Norman and Mike and Camille. So the ball remains my sole possession from life before the fall. I have wondered if my family had stayed, would I have pursued my burning desire to play baseball, or would the music and restlessness that eventually took over my life catch up with me anyway. Smack dab in the middle of my youth, in a small idealistic town, in a time when my friends and I were pushing the limits and planning our exit strategy, I got traded to another existence five states away. I have no regrets at all, but I have the baseball, and it teases me toward the proverbial road not taken. Steve and I were like Chris and Gordie in the film Stand by Me; Eddie and I spent near every single day together hiking through Heckscher, singing, teaching each other guitar. Every. Single. Day. For five years.

They all signed the ball.

Now I’m thinning out my collections of books and art, pawning off possessions and boxing up souvenirs. My emotional connection to many of these things is tied to the people I met along the way. While it is true that the further through life I paddle, the more I’m interested in what I can enjoy at the time, not stow away like pirate booty. How many times do we buy things while traveling, bring them home and display them, and eventually replace them with new souvenirs? Even if I do take the items out and look at them or show people, the significance eventually ebbs. I have stories and memories, and sometimes I have a longing to return, but I quickly realize that an object is not a memory, it is a symbol, a window through which we can watch our youth.

But this box is different. These are the remnants of when a boy literally grew up and tried like hell to hold tight to what he knew he was losing. I can hold the ball and see us in Steve’s backyard, yelling as we ran the bases, and I can still smell the marsh near the river that time we found an old shack for duck hunters and carved our names in the walls. The ball is proof I was there and it all happened. Souvenirs play an important role in moving on. They keep us from carrying the guilt of complete abandonment. Once in a while I pick up the ball and can hear their voices calling across the yard, across the years, Steve holding a sign of luck, Eddie calling for me not to go, please don’t go. And we’d say good night. Not goodbye—a small quirk of ours. Good night! We’d yell, and laugh, oh my living God we would laugh.  

I used to have this crazy dream that we would all meet at a pub, probably on the Island, and hug and laugh and drink and tell stories of then. It would be at the old Great River Inn, which I think is an Italian restaurant now, or across the river in Oakdale, on the water, and we’d get tables on the deck. Eddie and I would have made fun of Todd for the way he used to follow us through the marshes and kept cursing whenever he stepped in the mud. Steve would recall the terrifying afternoon I hit a fly ball right at the sliding glass door on the back of his house. We’ll both remember at the same time how we used to see who could hit the ball over the roof, and then we’d retrieve it from the street and see who could throw the ball the farthest. And right at that moment I’ll pull the ball out of my pocket and show them how bad their signatures were when we were young, and we’ll laugh and pass it around, but in the presence of these people the ball will suddenly seem irrelevant. We’ll break into a chorus of the Zombies “Time of the Season” like we used to while walking to the deli. Then we’ll order more wings and beers and someone will inevitably have to leave early because of family obligations. Todd will have to head home, and Camille will have to get back to the city.

But that will never happen. We lost Eddie a couple of years ago just before Christmas, and since then the desire to go back to that beautiful, timeless, idyllic hamlet has faded away. But we could have met, we should have. We could have convinced the bartender to play some early seventies music like the Beatles “Let it Be” album. And Todd and I would tell everyone how we were sitting in his room listening to the radio when the story came through that The Beatles broke up. It will get quiet and someone, probably Janet, will say she has to leave, so we’ll all stand in the parking lot and shake hands, and hug, and say we must do it again. They will drive off, but I’ll wait, because that’s how I see this going down. I’ll stand there almost five decades after seeing them last and wonder how it is possible to live this long and still remember details. I’ll be glad I went back, but I’ll remind myself I really must move on and simplify my life, so I’ll turn toward the river and wonder just how far I can still throw a ball.

Eddie and I got back in touch about five years ago and talked often. Neither of us changed when talking to each other, and it was clear we would have remained close no matter where life brought us. We didn’t drift apart; we grew up. 1975 is so far ago I can’t conceive it ever happened at all; yet I can make a case it all went down last week, and if I head down Great River Road and make a right at Church Road and follow it all the way up past Woodhaven, and stay right when I get to Leeside Drive, my dad would be outside at the barbeque, and my brother mowing the lawn. My sister would be in her room at the top of the stairs, and me, well, I’d be heading down the road to Eddie’s and we’d be walking out toward the Great South Bay for the day to see what is next.

It’s just a ball. It’s just a damn ball. It will go back in the closet, and my friends will go back to their faraway towns scattered from Long Island to Florida. All of us probably keep neat houses with boxes stowed behind stairs just beyond reach. Even this house I’m organizing and which I built twenty-five years ago is little more than a hotel to occupy as long as possible before I check out and others make themselves at home. Maybe someone will find my baseball behind a cabinet, and the names will be worn off when the kids here take it outside and toss it around. Anyway, it’s a ball; it’s how it is meant to be used.

Goodnight Eddie.

June 18th, 1975

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Heckscher State Park, Long Island

 

I’m cleaning closets and donating clothes and other items I no longer need. Some are just old collectibles in boxes shoved beneath beds and in the attic. If I could fit junk in the crawl space under the house I probably would. I have too much stuff. Soon, most of it will be gone, but it isn’t easy deciding what to keep. I can easily make a case for retaining every item. Sometimes it is comforting to pull out an old trinket and tell stories about what happened. I have an ashtray from a resort in Palm Springs from when I was fifteen, but I can’t mention it without my mother reminding me how I wandered alone for hours in rattlesnake country in the San Jacinto Mountains. I’m keeping that one. There are postcards and paperweights from family vacations and solo trips out west. Most of it is going. I can remember what happened without a cheap plastic prompt. And if I can’t remember then the item is a waste of space.

But last night I came to what I call the “Long Island Box.”

At fourteen years old we moved from my childhood home on the Island to Virginia—that was over half a century ago; so far in my past I am closer to ninety than I am to then. And so much has happened since those days to make those first fourteen years little more than a title page; at best a brief introduction to the rest of my life. In fact, it seems that boy might easily be someone else save one particular item: the baseball my friends signed and gave me when I moved. On the rare days I pick it up it connects us across time and distance. I can look at the ball as proof I actually knew those people, and if I were to go back to Long Island, I’d almost expect to see them in their youth. Memories trick us into thinking of some places as special when, in fact, it is usually a particular time we relish. The truth is, when I hold the ball I don’t want to go back to New York; I want to go back to 1975.

When we were young we played baseball; we listened to music; we hiked the woods of Heckscher State Park; we skated across the Connetquat River and waded well into the Great South Bay. We hopped the fence of the Bayard Cutting Arboretum and camped out and kept secrets; we built forts and fought over stupid things. We came of age during the Vietnam War, and music was part of our blood. Now as if to symbolize all those days, I have the baseball. The names have not faded even while most of the faces have, though I certainly can conjure up the idea of who they all were. Over the years I’ve been back to New York, but never saw those friends again. Still, when I return I say I’m going “back” to New York, not “up,” as if New York will always be a time more than a place.

When those friends gave me the ball that last day, I wanted to stay in that town and finish growing up with Steve and Todd, Eddie and Paul, Janet and Lisa and Essie and Norman and Mike. So the ball remains my sole possession from life before the fall. I have wondered if we had stayed would I have pursued my burning desire to play baseball, or would the music and restlessness that eventually took over my life catch up with me anyway. Smack dab in the middle of my youth, in a small idealistic town, in a time when my friends and I were pushing the limits and planning our exit strategy, I got traded to another existence five states away. I have no regrets at all, but I have the baseball, and it teases me toward the proverbial road not taken.

Now I’m thinning out my collections of books and art, pawning off possessions and boxing up souvenirs. I have no emotional connection to many of these things other than the people I met along the way. But now I also have my own books and journals for when the memory fades. The further through life I paddle, the more I’m interested in what I can enjoy at the time, not stow away like pirate booty. How many times do we buy things while traveling, bring them home and display them, and eventually replace them with new souvenirs? Even if I do take the items out and look at them or show people, the significance eventually ebbs. I have stories and memories, and sometimes I have a longing to return, but I quickly realize that an object is not a memory, it is a symbol, a window through which we can watch our youth. I can hold the ball and see us in Steve’s backyard, yelling as we ran the bases, and I can still smell the marsh near the river that time we found an old shack for duck hunters and carved our names in the walls. The ball is proof I was there and it all happened. Souvenirs play an important role in moving on. They keep us from carrying the guilt of complete abandonment. Once in awhile I pick up the ball and can hear their voices calling across the yard, across the years.

Sometimes I get this crazy idea that we’re all going to meet at a pub, probably on the Island, and hug and laugh and drink and tell stories of then. It will be across the river in Oakdale, on the water, and we’ll get tables on the deck. Eddie and I will make fun of Todd for the way he used to follow us through the marshes and kept cursing whenever he stepped in the mud. Steve will talk about baseball and the terrifying afternoon I hit a fly ball right at the sliding glass door on the back of his house. We’ll both remember at the same time how we used to see who could hit the ball over the roof, and then we’d retrieve it from the street and see who could throw the ball the farthest. And right at that moment I’ll pull the ball out of my pocket and show them how bad their signatures were when we were young, and we’ll laugh and pass it around, but in the presence of these people the ball will suddenly seem irrelevant. We’ll break into a chorus of the Zombies “Time of the Season” like we used to while walking to the deli. Then we’ll order more wings and beers and someone will inevitably have to leave early because of family obligations. Still, for a few short hours we’ll gather and maybe convince the bartender to play some early seventies music like the Beatles “Let it Be” album. And Todd and I will tell everyone how we were sitting in his room listening to the radio when the story came through that they broke up. It will get quiet and someone, probably Janet, will say she has to leave, so we’ll all stand in the parking lot and shake hands, and hug, and say we must do it again. They will drive off but I’ll wait, because that’s how I see this going down. I’ll stand there four decades after seeing them last and wonder how it is possible to live this long and still remember details. I’ll be glad I went back, but I’ll remind myself I really must move on and simplify my life, so I’ll turn toward the river and wonder just how far I can still throw a ball.

We didn’t drift apart; we grew up. The ball will go back in the closet, and my friends will go back to their faraway towns scattered from Long Island to Florida. All of us probably keep neat houses with boxes stowed behind stairs just beyond reach. Even this house I’m organizing and which I built twenty years ago is little more than a hotel to occupy as long as possible before I check out and others make themselves at home. Maybe someone will find my baseball behind a cabinet, and the names will be worn off when the kids here take it outside and toss it around. Anyway, it’s a ball; it’s probably how it is meant to be used.

 

(photo of the Great South Bay at Heckscher State Park)